On  tio  <c 
The  Good 
Ship  Earth 


lerbert 
Quick 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 


ON  BOARD  THE 
GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

A  Survey  of  World  Problems 


By 

HERBERT  QUICK 

»" 

Author  of 

Aladdin  &  Co.,  The  Broken  Lance,  etc.,  etc. 


INDIANAPOLIS 

THE  BOBBS-MERRILL  COMPANY 
PUBLISHERS 


v\ 


COPYRIGHT  1913 
THE  BOBBS-MERRILL  COMPANY 


Main  Lib. 
Sept. 


PRESS    OF 
BRAUNWORTH   &    CO. 

BOOKBINDERS    AND    PRINTERS 
BROOKLYN,    N.    Y. 


CONTENTS 


PACK 

I    WE  ARE  ALL  IN  THE  SAME  BOAT 1 

II    How  DID  WE  COME  ABOARD? 8 

III  CHANGING  OUR  QUARTERS  ON  SHIPBOARD    .     .  14 

IV  THE  RIDDLE  OF  THE  RAW  MATERIAL  OF  MAN    .  24 
V    FOUR  PROBLEMS  OF  FOOD 36 

VI    THE  ONLY  THING  WORTH  WORSHIPING — FORCE  62 

VII    SOME  IMPENDING  MIGRATIONS 77 

VIII    THE  IRON  AGE— AND  THEN? 92 

IX    OUR  WORLD-WIDE  METAL  OF  WORSHIP— GOLD  .  100 

X    "MULTIPLY  AND  REPLENISH  THE  EARTH"     .     .  108 

XI    THE  KIND  OF  PASSENGERS  THAT  MULTIPLY    .  136 
XII     SEVEN  PERILS  OF  HUMANITY — Number  One. 

THE  MOHAMMEDAN  PERIL 153 

XIII  SEVEN  PERILS  OF  HUMANITY — Number  Two. 

THE  SPANISH-PORTUGUESE  PERIL   ....  162 

XIV  SEVEN  PERILS  OF  HUMANITY — Number  Three. 

THE  RUSSIAN  PERIL 170 

XV    SEVEN  PERILS  OF  HUMANITY— Number  Four. 

THE  HINDU  PERIL 178 

XVI    SEVEN  PERILS  OF  HUMANITY — Number  Five. 

THE  YELLOW  PERIL 187 

XVII     SEVEN  PERILS  OF  HUMANITY — Number  Six. 

THE  BLACK  PERIL 194 

XVIII     SEVEN  PERILS  OF  HUMANITY— Number  Seven. 

THE  WHITE  PERIL 202 

XIX    THE  MINGLING  OF  THE  PEOPLES 207 

XX    PATRIOTISM — VICE  OR  VIRTUE?  223 


S8S701 


CO  NTENTS— Continued 

CHAPTER  PACK 

XXI  THE  EVILS  OF  GOOD  GOVERNMENT      ....  230 

XXII  THE  REAL  WHITE  MAN'S  BURDEN    ....  244 

XXIII  THE  UNITED  STATES  OF  THE  WORLD  ....  259 

XXIV  A  FEDERATION  PROBLEM 267 

XXV  THE  PREVENTION  OF  FLOODS 282 

XXVI  THE  SOIL  IN  JEOPARDY 290 

XXVII  THE  HAULAGE  OF  FERTILITY 306 

XXVIII  THE  RAILWAYS  ACROSS  THE  DECKS    ....  314 

XXIX  ROBINSON  CRUSOE'S  LESSON 322 

XXX  THE  WATER  COURSES 330 

XXXI  POVERTY  vs.  MONOPOLY 350 

XXXII  THE  NIGHTMARE  OF  MILITARISM 358 

XXXIII  SOCIAL  OLD  AGE  AND  DEATH 377 

XXXIV  THE  GREAT  MIGRATION 385 

XXXV  THE  SOCIAL  CRYSTAL  400 


INTRODUCTION 

Of  the  light-bringing  books,  one  reveals  the  hidden 
by  cutting  us  a  vista  through  some  jungle  of  fact.  An- 
other bears  us  to  some  mount  of  vision  and  shows  us  a 
panorama.  Of  the  latter  sort  is  this  book.  The  reader 
feels  as  if  the  author  stood  beside  him  on  some  lofty 
peak,  overlooking  all  the  kingdoms  of  the  earth  and 
all  the  centuries,  and,  with  one  hand  on  the  reader's 
shoulder  gently  turning  him  now  toward  this  quarter, 
now  toward  that,  with  the  other  he  swiftly  points  out 
the  great  stirring  features  of  the  scene  as  with  vivid 
kindling  speech  he  interprets  them.  Many  men  have 
mapped  and  described  segments  of  the  panorama  Earth 
and  Man,  but  I  know  of  no  one  who  has  been  able  in 
a  brief  space  to  draw  out  of  it  so  much  meaning  for  his 
readers  as  Mr.  Quick. 

So  often  men  gifted  with  imagination  are  wanting  in 
steady  intellectual  grasp  that  it  is  refreshing  to  meet 
with  a  seer  who  seizes  upon  a  fundamental  truth  and 
consistently  holds  to  it.  Usually  the  great  principle  of 
population  is  recognized  only  by  the  conservative.  Mr. 
Quick  is  unique  in  being  a  constructive  reformer  with 
faith  in  continuing  social  progress,  who,  nevertheless, 
perceives  the  fatal  tendency  of  man  to  defeat  his  aspira- 
tions by  his  blind  multiplication.  I  know  of  no  con- 
temporary writer  who  applies  the  law  of  population 
with  equal  courage  and  precision,  and  to  the  last  impli- 
cation and  the  last  detail  I  am  in  agreement  with  him. 

His  eloquent  demonstration  of  the  folly  of  exporting 
"good,  government"  to  the  backward  peoples  and  the 


INTRODUCTION 

wisdom  of  evangelizing  them  by  means  of  devoted 
missionaries  and  teachers  is  one  of  the  golden  passages 
of  the  book. 

At  a  time  when  the  problems  of  race  mingling  and 
race  crossing  are  befogged  by  enthusiasts  whose  ami- 
able sentiments  blind  them  to  essential  truths,  it  is  well 
to  hearken  to  a  man  of  broad  sympathies,  utterly  free 
from  the  taint  of  race  prejudice,  who,  nevertheless, 
presents  with  the  force  of  a  mathematical  demonstra- 
tion the  ugly  consequences  of  the  untrammeled  mixing 
of  dissimilar  races. 

The  author's  speculation  as  to  the  key-reform  that 
will  put  humanity  in  the  path  of  progress  is  certain  to 
provoke  earnest  dissent.  One  group  of  critics  will 
say :  "Your  reform  is  not  the  pivotal  one.  To-day  it 
is  chiefly  capital  that  captures  the  surplus,  not  land. 
Past  aristocracies  may  have  rested  on  landlordism,  but 
private  capitalism  is  the  basis  of  plutocracy  to-day.  No 
taking  of  ground  rents  for  community  benefit  can  dif- 
fuse the  ownership  of  the  mines  and  the  mills  or  end 
the  capitalist's  control  over  the  life  and  well-being  of 
the  workers.  The  recovery  of  industrial  freedom  in- 
volves the  community  ownership  of  the  means  of  pro- 
duction." 

From  another  quarter  will  come  the  protest:  "Your 
socializing  of  land  values  is  merely  an  economic  re- 
form, and  nothing  very  great  can  hinge  on  it.  More 
fundamental  than  the  democratizing  of  wealth,  or  even 
the  democratizing  of  welfare,  is  the  democratizing  of 


INTRODUCTION 

knowledge  and  high  ideals  of  life.  Ignorance,  supersti- 
tion and  vice  are  greater  foes  of  human  advancement 
than  the  exactions  of  landlord  or  capitalist.  The  uni- 
versal diffusion  of  essential  knowledge  and  of  right 
ideals  of  life  is  certain  to  bring  in  time  whatever  eco- 
nomic reforms  may  be  necessary.  But  they  will  not 
bring  it.  It  is,  above  all,  public  education  that  sets  off 
Occident  from  Orient  and  our  time  from  other  times. 
If  only  education  can  be  broadened  and  deepened,  the 
constant  adjustments  called  for  by  the  changing  cir- 
cumstances of  society  will  be  made  promptly  and  well." 
The  socializing  of  land  values,  socialism  and  educa- 
tionism — these  are  the  most  fundamental  proposals 
for  the  promotion  of  social  progress  in  the  world  to- 
day, and  the  discussion  that  rages  about  them  is  a  ver- 
itable battle  of  the  giants.  Our  author's  powerful  ad- 
vocacy of  land  reform  ought  to  bring  into  action  the 
most  redoubtable  champions  of  the  rival  reforms. 

EDWARD  ALSWORTH  Ross. 
The  University  of  Wisconsin. 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 


ON  BOARD  THE 
GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

CHAPTER  I 

WE  ARE  ALL  IN  THE  SAME  BOAT 

OFTEN  we  hear  the  saying,  "We  are  all 
in  the  same  boat";  but  how  seldom  do 
we  think  of  the  world- wide,  universal,  physical 
sense  in  which  the  maxim  is  true.  We  are  all 
passengers  on  the  good  ship  Earth,  and  all  his- 
tory is  the  record  of  the  relations  between  hu- 
man beings  as  such  passengers. 
x  A  great  air-ship,  is  the  Earth,  twenty-five 
thousand  miles  in  girth,  covered  with  water, 
save  where  the  high  spots  of  the  solid  crust 
protrude  in  patches  and  spots  to  the  extent 
of  a  quarter  of  her  deck  room.  On  those  spots, 
called  land,  we,  the  passengers,  must,  in  the 
main,  live.  It  is  the  great  gift  of  the  Creative 
Principle  to  all  men. 

i 


ON  EOARJ)  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

The  good  ship  Earth  has  no  crew.  She  is 
like  an  air-ship,  automatically  controlled  by 
some  force  not  contained  in  the  vessel  guided. 
She  has  no  rudder,  no  sails,  no  motors,  no  en- 
gines. She  works  herself.  The  shove  into 
space  which  set  her  going  is  all  the  impulse 
she  needs;  so  on,  and  on,  and  on  she  flies  in 
her  predestined  path,  without  a  crew,  laden 
with  passengers. 

We  know  that  she  moves,  just  as  we  know 
that  a  railway  train  moves — by  the  way  in 
which  things  beside  her  path  seem  to  move. 
The  stars  and  planets  are  to  the  earth  what 
the  farms,  towns  and  buildings  are  to  the  train. 
They  show  us  passengers  that  our  good  ship 
Earth  is  on  her  way.  But  we  do  not  know 
whither  she  is  bound.  We  are  embarked  on 
a  vessel  that  left  port  eons  ago  under  sealed 
orders. 

Our  air-ship  is  globular,  and  spins  around 
and  around — for  the  pitcher  who  hurled  her 
gave  her  the  whirl  that  means  a  curve-ball. 
She  holds  us  to  her,  so  we  can  not  fly  off.  She 
draws  us,  as  a  magnet  draws  steel  dust,  so 

2 


ALL  IN  THE  SAME  BOAT 

that  as  she  spins  from  the  thumb  and  finger 
of  God,  we  stay  on.  We  know  that  our  round 
ship  whirls;  just  as  we  know  the  same  thing 
of  a  merry-go-round — because  we  pass  the 
same  things  regularly — once  every  twenty- 
four  hours.  The  things  we  pass  are  the  sun, 
moon,  planets  and  stars — our  whirling  is 
proven  by  the  identical  evidence  that  proves 
our  forward  motion. 

Our  forward  path,  too,  is  a  circle — for  after 
three  hundred  and  sixty-five  days,  we  return 
to  the  place  occupied  a  twelvemonth  ago. 
This  is  our  trip  about  the  sun,  and  makes  our 
year.  Thus  we  go  spinning  like  a  curved  base- 
ball, and  behaving  as  would  the  baseball  if  the 
pitcher  could  throw  in  a  circle — the  sun  being 
the  pitcher's  box  in  the  center  of  the  ring. 

But  do  we  return  to  the  very  spot  occupied 
a  year  ago?  No,  for  the  sun,  too,  moves,  as  if 
the  whole  diamond  and  planet-studded  out- 
field were  traveling,  carrying  the  great  Game 
with  it;  or  like  a  ball  whirled  about  the  head 
of  a  man  who  walks  as  he  whirls  it.  Whither 
does  the  man  walk  who  whirls  about  his  head 

3. 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

our  good  air-ship  Earth?  We  do  not  know. 
We  only  know  that  toward  some  unimagin- 
able goal  the  sun  travels,  dragging  with  him 
all  our  planets  with  all  their  moons,  and  a 
great  cloud  of  comets,  asteroids  and  meteors. 
It  is  one  of  the  mysteries  incident  to  the  fate  of 
the  human  race — that  of  sailing  on  their  ship 
Earth  under  sealed  orders. 

We  are  on  this  ship  as  passengers;  but  there 
is  no  cafe  service.  The  passengers  must  feed 
themselves.  Moreover,  they  must  subsist  out 
of  the  ship  itself.  The  ship  breaks  out  in  a 
green  rash  called  plant  life.  On  this,  millions 
of  things  called  animals  live  by  taking  the 
green  substance  into  their  bodies  and  making 
it  over  into  body-tissue.  Certain  other  animals 
eat  these  plant-eating  animals.  The  decks  of 
the  ship,  even  the  watery  parts,  are  thus  full  of 
growing,  and  eating,  and  killing  and  digest- 
ing. And  we,  the  passengers,  who  believe  all 
this  is  for  us,  are  of  the  sort  that  eat  plants, 
and  devour  animals,  and  do  more  killing  and 
destroying  than  any  of  the  other  creatures  on 
board. 

4 


ALL  IN  THE  SAME  BOAT 

Now  all  these  plants  and  animals  are  made 
out  of  the  substance  of  the  ship  itself.  We 
are  all  in  the  same  boat  with  the  plants  and 
brutes  in  this  respect — we  are  made  of  the 
earth,  and  we  dissolve  back  into  the  earth. 
When  the  earth  was  a  molten,  uninhabited,  un- 
inhabitable mass,  it  weighed  (save  for  an  occa- 
sional meteor  which  we  pick  up  as  we  fly)  to 
a  pennyweight  what  it  weighs  now,  with  its 
plants  and  animals  and  its  billion  and  a  half 
people ;  just  as  a  cheese  weighs  no  more  when 
it  becomes  full  of  mites.  We  are  earth-mites. 
We  are  just  bits  of  earth  organized  into  two- 
legged  bubbles  of  earth  which  last  a  score,  or 
two  score,  or  three  score  years  and  ten,  and 
then — death  pricks  the  bubble,  and  we  are 
earth  again.  We  last  only  for  a  few  whirls  of 
the  merry-go-round,  the  longest-lived  of  us. 

All  the  time  the  high  places  on  which  we 
live — the  dry  parts  of  the  decks  called  land — 
are  being  worn  down.  And  when  the  plants 
and  animals  go  back  into  the  earth,  a  part  of 
them  only  can  be  turned  again  into  things  the 
passengers  can  consume.  So  there  is  a  loss  of 

5 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

matter  to  subsist  upon.  Furthermore,  we  pas- 
sengers multiply  in  numbers.  In  some  por- 
tions of  the  ship,  they  are  already  so  numerous 
that  we  can  not  find  adequate  subsistence.  We 
seem  to  be  growing  in  numbers  almost  every- 
where. In  our  part  of  the  ship,  we  have  a  hun- 
dred millions  where  a  hundred  years  ago  there 
were  not  three  millions,  and  we  are  told  that 
in  three  hundred  years  there  will  be  ten  hun- 
dred millions  of  us  here,  in  the  United  States. 
Can  so  many  passengers  find  subsistence  on 
the  ship?  We  are  for  the  first  time  in  our 
world's  history,  as  far  as  we  know,  possessed 
of  the  knowledge  and  the  intelligence  which 
make  us  able  even  to  ask  such  questions.  One 
by  one  the  bandages  have  been  removed  from 
our  eyes,  and  we  see  the  good  ship  Earth 
round  and  entire,  and  we  can  achieve  some  ap- 
proach to  a  realization  of  her  problems.  What 
are  these  problems,  and  how  shall  we  meet 
them?  We  can  no  longer  face  the  future 
blindly  asserting  that  all  will  be  well.  All  is 
not  well.  All  has  never  been  well.  We  can 
no  longer  see  nation  go  up  against  nation  to 

6 


ALL  IN  THE  SAME  BOAT 

slaughter  and  burn  with  the  feeling  that  it 
does  not  concern  us.  It  does  concern  us.  For 
the  first  time  in  the  world's  history,  we  are 
able  intelligently  to  ask  ourselves  what  this 
tremendous  voyage  on  the  good  ship  Earth 
really  means,  how  we  are  to  treat  our  fellow 
passengers,  how  we  are  to  possess  our  great 
vessel,  whether  life  for  all  of  us  and  all  our 
children  is  possible,  and  if  not  possible,  who 
with  his  progeny  shall  survive  or  should  sur- 
vive. 


CHAPTER  II 

HOW  DID  WE  COME  ABOARD? 

WHEN  the  good  ship  Earth,  on  which 
we  are  all  embarked,  was  first  pitched 
into  space,  spinning  like  a  curve-ball,  she  car- 
ried no  passengers.  Then  there  was  only  ship 
— passengers  were  created  out  of  the  materials 
of  the  decks,  and  walked  those  decks  of  which 
they  were  but  now  portions. 

The  ship  was  a  great,  cloudy,  misty  mass 
of  gases,  which  contained  all  the  atoms  that 
now  make  up  the  planet.  There  was  no 
place  for  plant  or  animal.  The  gases  drew 
together  and  in  doing  so  grew  hot,  just  as  the 
air  grows  hot  when  pressed  in  the  cylinder  of 
an  engine — so  hot  that  even  yet  the  inside  of 
our  great  air-ship  is  hot  enough  to  melt  rocks 
and  make  of  them  lava.  Until  this  cooled 
there  was  no  opportunity  for  passengers  on 
the  ship — for  plant  or  animal. 

Finally  the  cooling  made  the  rocks  and  met- 
8 


HOW  DID  WE  COME  ABOARD? 

als  solid — but  the  waters  were  still  steam. 
There  was  no  ocean — only  clouds  of  steam 
whirling  in  fearful  storms  about  the  globe, 
with  its  crust  of  rock  and  its  core  of  fire.  Then 
as  the  heat  moderated,  water  was  formed,  and 
at  last  there  were  land  and  water.  But  the  ship 
was  still  without  passengers — there  were  no 
plants  nor  animals. 

Then  the  greatest  event  in  the  history  of  the 
vessel  on  which  we  sail,  took  place.  Some- 
where in  the  warm  waters  about  the  poles,  or 
in  the  bubbling  swamps  between  the  volcanic 
mountains — somehow,  somewhere,  sometime 
— the  elements  came  together  in  such  a  man- 
ner that  out  of  the  atoms  of  the  ship's  sub- 
stance, a  molecule  of  protoplasm  was  formed. 

The  greatest  word  the  human  tongue  can 
form  is  God,  and  the  next  is  protoplasm.  Per- 
haps when  we  know  all,  we  shall  see  that  pro- 
toplasm and  God  are  the  same — the  one  the 
whole,  the  other  the  part  from  which  we  can 
finally  arrive  at  a  theory  of  the  whole,  if  not  a 
conception  of  it  The  mind  of  man  has  many 
deities — but  if,  under  God,  there  is  aught  be- 

9 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

fore  which  he  should  bow  himself,  that  some- 
thing is  protoplasm.  For  in  the  appearance  of 
protoplasm,  on  the  deck  of  the  good  ship 
Earth,  appeared  the  thing  out  of  which  came 
all  that  green  rash  which  breaks  out  and 
clothes  her  surface  with  vegetation,  and  the 
moving  things  that  eat  the  vegetation  and 
one  another,  and  finally,  man  himself — who 
fondly  believes  himself  the  passenger  for 
whose  sole  accommodation  the  ship  is 
launched. 

What  is  protoplasm?  It  is  a  strange  insig- 
nificant slime,  and  looks  like  the  white  of  an 
egg — but  it  is  the  mightiest  thing  on  earth. 
It  is  a  combination  of  carbon — like  that  in  the 
diamond  or  soot — of  nitrogen — that  unstable 
thing  of  which  nitroglycerin  and  other  explo- 
sives are  largely  made  up — of  hydrogen — that 
gas  which  bursts  with  such  flame  and  thunder 
when  the  balloon  or  the  gas  works  blow  up — 
and  of  oxygen — that  element  which  eats  up 
iron  and  rushes  into  the  arms  of  carbon  so 
fiercely  as  to  cause  flame  when  the  coal  burns 
in  the  grate.  So  protoplasm,  like  man,  has  in 

10 


HOW  DID  WE  COME  ABOARD? 

it  every  factor  of  revolution,  explosion,  heat, 
light,  cataclysm,  destruction,  development  and 
progress.  But  it  is  only  a  slime  or  jelly.  These 
four  elements — and  others  in  smaller  quanti- 
ties— are  combined  in  so  wonderful  and  com- 
plex a  way  in  protoplasm,  that  the  wisest 
chemist  does  not  know  the  secret  of  the  com- 
bination. When  nobody  knows,  we  say  "God 
knows!"  We  know  the  composition  of  the 
molecule  of  water — it  is  made  up  of  two  atoms 
of  hydrogen  and  one  of  oxygen — and  even  the 
schoolboy  calls  it  "H2O".  But  God  only 
knows  the  way  in  which  <he  molecule  of  pro- 
toplasm is  built.  The  nearest  guess  at  the 
formula  of  albumen,  or  the  white  of  an  egg  is 

UQ720    HH34    N2!8    g5    Q248,,        ^Jg    Jg    ^    COmpleX 

for  the  mind  to  visualize  into  a  realizable 
thing;  and  protoplasm  must  be  more  complex 
—perhaps  a  thousand  times  more  complex. 

But  we  know  that  when  this  molecule  is 
formed  in  the  laboratory  of  God  it  has  won- 
derful qualities — quite  different  in  kind  from 
any  other  substance.  It  has  sensibility  and  ir- 
ritability. In  other  words,  it  feels!  It  has  cer- 

ii 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

tain  movements  of  its  own.  It  has  the  power 
of  forming  itself  into  cells,  and  each  cell  of 
protoplasm  has  the  power  of  taking  other  sub- 
stances from  its  surroundings,  and  building  up 
new  and  wonderful  forms,  all  endowed  with 
those  new  powers  of  motion,  feeling,  and  regu- 
lar and  successive  adjustments  to  surround- 
ings. In  other  words,  the  protoplasm  molecule 
has  life. 

When  out  of  the  substance  of  the  deck  of  the 
good  ship  Earth — sailing  under  sealed  orders 
without  crew  or  passenger,  through  the  depths 
of  space — the  carbon,  oxygen,  hydrogen  and 
nitrogen  of  the  vessel  itself  came  together  in 
that  wonderful  molecule  called  protoplasm, 
life  was  born.  And  with  life,  evolution  began. 
And  through  evolution,  came  the  ameba,  the 
protozoon,  the  shell-fish,  the  fish,  the  reptile, 
the  bird,  the  mammal,  and  finally,  man.  Crea- 
tion reached  the  man-stage,  and  the  first  great 
cycle  was  complete.  The  ship  had  its  pas- 
sengers evolved  from  the  ship  herself.  Thus 
we  came  aboard. 

If  you  could  take  a  test  tube  and  make  that 

12 


HOW  DID  WE  COME  ABOARD? 

marvelous  molecule,  it  would  have  life,  just 
as  if  God  made  it  in  the  deeps  of  the  primor- 
dial ocean.  But  you  can  not  do  it.  Perhaps 
man  may  sometime  perform  the  marvel — but 
he  has  not  as  yet.  God  had  to  take  the  nebula, 
spread  out  mistily  over  billions  of  cubic  miles 
of  space,  condense  it  to  a  sun,  compress  the 
sun  to  a  molten  world,  and  shake  this  cosmic 
prescription  for  eons,  as  a  chemist  shakes  a 
vial,  before  He  got  the  compound  to  take  form 
in  that  wonderful  substance  called  protoplasm 
—and  then  it  took  millions  of  years  for  the 
life  in  it  to  rise  to  man. 

When  man  can  do  this  he  can  create  proto- 
plasm and  artificially  make  life.  We,  made 
of  this  substance  and  by  it,  are  so  far  above  our 
primordial  slime  that  we  are  here  in  these 
glimpses  of  world  problems  actually  facing 
the  question  as  to  whether  the  doom  of  man  is 
eventual  misery  and  extinction,  or  happiness 
and  glory. 

Sublime  and  wonderful  march  of  life!  from 
the  globule  of  jelly,  to  the  being  who  questions 
the  force  which  brought  him  into  existence  1 


CHAPTER  III 

CHANGING  OUR  QUARTERS  ON  SHIPBOARD 

MINDS  may  differ  as  to  how  man  came 
into  being  on  the  good  ship  Earth. 
Some  will  see  in  man  the  last  stage  of  evolu- 
tion— the  end  of  that  great  chain  beginning 
with  a  spot  of  slime — the  first  tiny  mass  of 
protoplasm — and  ending  with  us.  Others 
will  see  in  him  a  creature  produced  by  a  spe- 
cial creative  act  of  God,  and  quite  unrelated 
by  heredity  to  his  fellow  beings  in  the  world 
of  life.  It  matters  little  to  me.  However  it 
may  be,  this  is  sure,  we  have  been  formed  in 
some  way  out  of  the  dust  of  the  earth — out  of 
the  planking  of  the  decks  of  the  ship  on  which 
we  voyage. 

Here  we  are!  We  must  live.  We  must  live 
together.  We  must  win  our  subsistence  out  of 
the  decks  from  which  we  have  been  formed. 
Our  quarters  on  the  ship  must  be  found  some- 
where on  her  broad  decks — those  portions 

14 


CHANGING  OUR  QUARTERS 

which  rise  out  of  the  water,  and  which  we 
call  land.  How  shall  we  occupy  it?  What 
shall  be  our  relations  with  one  another?  Shall 
we  fight  and  quarrel  for  the  best  places,  and 
eat  one  another  up,  as  people  have  been  known 
to  do  when  cast  away  on  other  ships?  Or  shall 
we  organize  and  place  the  matter  under  regu- 
lations? In  fact  have  we  not  already  appor- 
tioned among  us  this  great  original  Zeppelin 
on  which  we  career  through  space?  If  so,  is 
the  apportionment  the  best  that  could  be 
made? 

Is  it  permanent,  or  shall  we — can  we? — 
move  about,  as  nations,  changing  our  quarters 
on  the  ship — moving  fore  and  aft  and  from 
starboard  to  port?  In  the  nature  of  things, 
can  any  apportionment  of  the  Earth  among  its 
tenants  be  permanent?  Is  there  such  a  princi- 
ple as  right?  If  so,  can  it  be  applied  to  our 
earth-tenancy?  Do  we  need  to  find  and  apply 
the  principle,  if  it  exists,  or  will  it  come  into 
operation  automatically — by  some  force  out- 
side ourselves,  like  the  wireless  control  that 
guides  our  ship  in  her  flight? 

15 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

Perhaps  we  shall  be  able  to  throw  a  little 
dim  light  on  some  of  these  matters.  But  first, 
what  are  the  big  facts  as  to  our  present  quar- 
ters on  the  ship? 

How  many  of  us  are  there? 

There  are  between  a  billion  and  a  half  and 
two  billions  of  us.  We  are  not  very  evenly 
distributed  over  our  land-and-water  Zeppelin. 
Many  things  tend  to  make  us  gather  in  dense 
communities  in  some  places,  and  to  scatter 
very  sparsely  in  others.  First,  we  arc  land 
animals,  and  the  seventy-five  per  cent,  of  our 
good  ship  Earth  which  is  below  the  water 
level,  we  can  not  inhabit.  So  we  give  it  over 
to  the  amphibians,  the  fishes  and  the  other 
swimmers.  This  must  always  be  so,  or  at  least 
it  must  be  so  until  the  water  of  the  earth,  like 
that  of  the  moon,  has  all  been  absorbed  into 
the  body  of  the  planet,  and  there  shall  be  no 
more  sea.  This  will  sometime  come  to  pass. 
Whether  or  not  man  will  survive  to  see  the 
day  no  one  can  with  certainty  say. 

And  even  as  to  the  solid  surface  of  the  ship, 
we  find  great  areas  of  deck  room  upon  which 

16 


CHANGING  OUR  QUARTERS 

we  can  not  live.  The  thing  most  decisive  of 
this  is  temperature.  Life  could  not  appear  on 
earth,  until  things  had  cooled  down  to  the 
liquid  point  of  water  from  its  condition  of 
steam.  And  life  must  first  have  appeared  in 
the  then  coolest  parts  of  the  globe.  These  cool- 
est spots  were  and  are  the  poles;  and  at  the 
poles — or  one  of  them — life  doubtless  first 
came  into  being.  Perhaps  the  first  nations  of 
men  lived,  and  fought,  and  struggled  with 
these  problems,  at  the  poles.  Instead  of  being 
the  discoverer  of  the  pole,  Peary  merely  re- 
turned to  the  ancient  home  of  the  race. 

But  the  poles  are  now  too  cold  for  successful 
human  life.  So  are  the  polar  regions,  reach- 
ing down  a  third  of  the  way  or  more  to  the 
lands  which  lie  amidships.  Sometime,  these 
arctic  regions  may  grow  warmer  again — we 
shall  speak  of  that  hereafter — but  now,  man 
must  abandon  great  portions  of  his  ship's  decks 
to  the  seal,  the  bear,  the  fox  and  their  frost- 
defying  fellows.  These  regions  have  cooled 
off  so  much  as  to  spoil  them  as  quarters  for 
any  very  large  numbers  of  passengers. 

17 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

So,  too,  as  to  the  equatorial  belt  amidships, 
the  temperature  has  prevented  its  being  the 
quarters  of  very  dense  communities  of  people. 
There  are  some  exceptions  to  this,  but  on  the 
whole,  the  torrid  zone  is  too  hot  for  successful 
human  life.  The  people  there  are  lacking  in 
both  numbers  and  energy. 

The  best  place  on  the  ship  is  in  that  strip 
each  side  of  the  equator  where  it  has  cooled 
off  to  just  the  right  temperature;  and  here, 
principally  on  the  north  side  of  the  hot  belt, 
the  passengers  are  mostly  found  quartered.  So 
dependent  are  the  "lords  of  creation"  on  the 
mere  matter  of  heat  and  cold! 

But  almost  as  powerful  is  the  factor  of 
moisture.  Where  it  is  too  dry,  the  dead  matter 
of  the  decks  of  the  good  ship  Earth  does  not 
readily  fuse  into  the  protean  shapes  of  life. 
The  force  which  works  through  that  mighty 
slime  called  protoplasm,  works  with  water  as 
a  tool — and  whole  continents  are  in  a  measure 
unfitted  by  lack  of  moisture  for  the  occupancy 
of  man. 

In  fact,  no  limitation  is  more  susceptible  to 
18 


CHANGING  OUR  QUARTERS 

accurate  computation  than  the  water  limit  to 
population.  Living  beings  must  take  from  the 
soil  the  matter  for  their  bodies.  Plants  are  the 
first  agents  in  this,  and  without  plants  there 
could  be  no  animals.  The  plant  is  a  factory  in 
which  raw  material  for  the  making  of  animals 
is  lifted  half-way  to  animalhood.  And  plants 
are  able  to  take  their  food  from  the  soil  only 
as  it  is  dissolved  in  water.  The  amount  of 
water  required  for  the  support  of  human  life 
has  been  made  by  McGee  the  basis  of  a  deter- 
mination of  the  possibilities  of  the  United 
States  in  the  matter  of  population.  He  shows 
that  the  water  falling  on  the  land  surface  of 
the  United  States  is  sufficient  to  dilute  plant 
food  sufficient  for  the  maintenance  of  the  ma- 
terial basis  of  a  thousand  millions  of  people 
here. 

Of  course,  this  determination  is  subject  to 
all  sorts  of  modifications;  but  the  principle 
must  be  admitted,  that  there  is  a  relation  be- 
tween the  water  available  for  plants  and  the 
animal  life  capable  of  being  supported  on 
earth.  The  life — including  human  life — must 

19 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

be  limited  by  the  supply  of  water  for  the  di- 
lution of  mineral  plant  food.  All  animal 
bodies  are  made  up  of  soil  elements  dissolved 
in  water.  All  plants  require  water  to  be 
transpired  through  their  leaves  in  the  process 
of  growth,  as  well  as  to  be  retained  in  their 
tissues;  and  all  animals  are  derived  from 
plants.  It  is  not,  therefore,  accidental  that 
the  word  "desert"  which  really  and  funda- 
mentally signifies  any  place  which  is  deserted, 
has  come  in  English  speech  to  mean  a  spot 
or  region  waterless  or  poorly  supplied  with 
water.  Temperature  is  the  first  requisite  for 
life;  mainly  because  it  is  only  within  a  certain 
range  of  temperature  that  water  can  act  as  the 
universal  solvent  of  the  raw  materials  of 
plants,  animals  and  man. 

So  man  must  ever  be  herded  into  those 
places  where  the  tyrant  spirits  of  heat  and 
moisture  allow  him  to  live.  His  quarters  on 
the  ship  are  determined  by  them. 

A  third  of  us  are  crowded  into  Southern  and 
Eastern  Asia.  Fifty  millions  of  us  are  in  the 
few  small  islands  of  Japan,  because  of  the 

20 


CHANGING  OUR  QUARTERS 

moisture  and  warmth  of  the  climate.  Three 
hundred  millions  more  are  in  China,  and 
swarms  equally  numerous  are  in  India  and  her 
neighboring  hives. 

In  the  continent  of  Europe,  there  are  well 
toward  four  hundred  millions  of  us.  And  in 
North  America,  we  have  about  a  hundred 
millions.  These  and  some  islands  are  the 
densely  populated  places.  Here  are  most  of 
the  passengers  quartered. 

No  captain  has  sent  men  to  these  quarters, 
except  Captain  Necessity  and  Captain  Power. 
They  have  fought  like  beasts  for  them,  and 
the  decks  of  the  ship  have  run  red  with  blood 
by  reason  of  migrations  of  passengers  from  one 
part  of  the  deck  to  another.  In  past  ages  these 
surgings  back  and  forth  have  been  blind  and 
mostly  unobserved  save  by  those  engaged  in 
the  fighting.  But  lately  by  reason  of  the  very 
simple  physical  fact  that  we  have  found  out 
how  to  put  thoughts  on  paper  and  multiply 
the  papers  by  machinery,  and  also  send 
thoughts  along  wires  in  no  time  at  all,  and 
because  we  have  found  ways  of  traveling  over 

21 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

the  watery  places  on  the  decks,  all  these  con- 
glomerations of  peoples  called  nations  have 
come  to  know  about  one  another,  and  to  watch 
one  another;  and  in  some  sort  of  way,  to  un- 
derstand one  another — though  not  very  well. 

And  the  wise  ones  among  men  are  wonder- 
ing how  we,  in  the  ages  to  come,  shall  occupy 
this  land.  They  of  the  crowded  spots  want  to 
move  over  into  the  places  which  are  not 
crowded.  Shall  they  be  permitted  to  move? 
Have  they  the  right?  Who  shall  decide? 

There  are  millions  of  acres  of  good  land 
which  is  sparsely  settled  because  of  facts  aside 
from  its  fertility.  It  was  remote  from  the 
place  in  which  the  race  had  its  first  home;  or 
it  was  in  one  of  those  hinterlands  from  which 
the  old  races  were  barred  because  they  trav- 
eled mostly  by  water;  or  it  was  peopled  by 
savages  who  were  kept  from  multiplying  and 
condemned  to  perpetual  savagery  by  wars  and 
ignorance  of  the  use  of  tools ;  or  it  was  across 
the  ocean  from  the  body  of  the  human  race. 
Now  it  is  known  to  all  men,  and  needed  by 
millions — yet  it  is  sparsely  settled. 

22 


CHANGING  OUR  QUARTERS 

They  who  abide  in  the  sparser  places  do  not 
like  to  have  people  of  other  religions,  colors 
and  languages  coming  among  them  in  large 
numbers.  Some  nations  are  more  intelligent 
than  others — or  think  themselves  so — and  de- 
sire to  keep  out  the  "inferior  races".  All, 
without  exception,  think  themselves  the  best 
people  in  the  world.  So  the  nations  stand  in 
their  various  quarters  of  the  globe,  each  armed 
to  keep  others  from  intruding,  and  so  divided 
by  color  lines,  lines  of  race,  religion  and  lan- 
guage, that  the  good  ship  Earth  is  like  a  cap- 
tainless  vessel,  the  occupants  of  which  are 
ready  to  fly  at  one  another's  throats.  And 
things — some  slow,  some  quick — are  happen- 
ing which  make  it  more  and  more  difficult  to 
keep  the  crowded  nations  cooped  up  where 
they  are.  Thus  the  future  lowers  dark  with 
problems — and  for  the  first  time  in  world  his- 
tory, the  people  are  wise  enough  to  see  the 
problems. 

And  to  solve  them?  Perhaps.  But  if  they 
solve  them — they  must  do  it  by  thinking  about 
them.  That  is  why  this  is  written. 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE  RIDDLE  OF  THE  RAW  MATERIAL  OF  MAN 

THE  great  race  problems  on  the  good 
ship  Earth  have  always  grown  out  of 
the  moving  of  those  great  cliques  of  passengers 
called  nations  or  tribes  from  one  part  of  the 
dry  decks  to  another,  and  jostling  other  peo- 
ples about,  throwing  them  overboard,  putting 
them  to  death,  enslaving  and  otherwise  exter- 
minating them. 

In  the  future  why  should  these  movements 
take  place?  Are  they  likely  to  be  necessary? 
And  if  so,  what  will  make  them  necessary? 
Come  to  the  bank  of  the  river — the  nearest 
river — and  I  will  show  you  one  reason  why 
we  may  have  to  move  sometime. 

If  it  be  after  a  rain,  the  river — any  river 
almost — will  be  roily.  If  it  be  the  Missouri, 
the  Tennessee,  the  Ohio,  the  Red,  the  Platte, 
the  Arkansas,  the  Sacramento,  the  Alabama, 

24 


THE    RAW   MATERIAL   OF    MAN 

the  Lower  Mississippi,  or  any  one  of  a  hun- 
dred others,  it  will  be  found  turbid  with  earth, 
whether  one  looks  just  after  a  rain  or  not.  And 
in  this  fact  lies  one  of  the  greatest  dangers  to 
our  part  of  the  ship. 

What  is  it  which  discolors  the  rivers?  It  is 
soil.  What  is  soil?  I  might  give  you  a  long 
and  learned  definition,  but  the  plain  English 
of  it  is,  "Soil  is  the  looser  earth,  spread  over 
the  surface,  and  in  which  plants  can  grow."  It 
is  an  essential  part  of  the  raw  material  of  man 
— and  woman. 

It  is  the  dust  which  has  gathered  on  the 
decks  of  the  good  ship  Earth  by  the  tram- 
pling of  the  feet  of  the  rain  and  hail,  the 
grinding  hoofs  of  the  ice,  the  crushing  and 
prying  lever  of  the  frost,  the  wearing  sand- 
blast of  wind-blown  particles  and  the  wash- 
ing of  the  waters.  Until  soil  appeared  on  the 
ship,  there  were  decks  clean  as  cement  side- 
walks, or  sterile  as  piles  of  building  stone — 
but  no  place  for  the  green  rash  breaking  out 
on  the  decks  which  we  call  vegetation.  And 
until  vegetation  came,  there  were  no  animals ; 

25 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

because  they  must  have  the  raw  earth  worked 
over  in  plants  or  other  animals  before  they 
can  assimilate  it. 

It  took  more  centuries  than  you  have  hairs 
in  your  head  to  make  a  good  soil.  In  the  mil- 
lenniums which  have  passed  there  has  been  a 
race  between  the  accumulation  of  vegetable 
matter  and  the  earth-dust  made  by  the  ele- 
ments and  the  forces  carrying  it  away,  in 
which  the  deposits  of  soil  have  managed  to 
keep  just  a  little  ahead  of  the  natural  wastage 
by  blowing,  washing  and  other  erosion.  May- 
be on  a  square  foot,  there  would  be  a  teaspoon- 
ful  more  of  good  soil  at  the  end  of  a  century 
than  at  the  beginning.  Increasing  at  the  rate 
of  a  teaspoonful  a  century,  given  centuries 
enough,  and  the  soil  is  eight  inches  deep, 
though  the  average  soil  is  shallower  than  that. 

In  his  action  on  the  soil,  man  has  shown 
most  strikingly  that  he  (and  he  only  of  all 
animals)  has  been  clothed  with  power  to  de- 
stroy the  globe  from  which  he  has  emerged, 
as  far  as  habitability  is  concerned.  He  finds 
a  new  continent  covered  with  trees.  Beetles, 

26 


THE    RAW    MATERIAL    OF    MAN 

scale-insects,  moths,  funguses  and  bacteria  do 
the  same  thing;  and  they  kill  trees;  but  man  is 
the  only  living  being  who  can  keep  them 
killed.  Beavers  can  cut  them  down;  but  man 
alone  keeps  them  cut  down.  He  found  the 
American  continent  covered  with  trees,  in 
large  part,  and  that  just  at  the  era  when  tree- 
cutting  machinery  had  been  or  was  about  to 
be  perfected,  and  he  proceeded  to  destroy  for- 
ests over  an  area  half  as  large  as  Europe.  He 
has  been  obliged  to  do  this  in  order  that  he 
might  found  states,  build  a  nation  and  extend 
civilization.  He  has  destroyed  the  splendid 
forests  which  were  the  fruition  of  hundreds  of 
years  of  growth ;  but  it  is  hardly  just  to  blame 
him,  ofio  condemn  the  destruction  as  waste. 

It  was  unavoidable  destruction,  and  in  the 
main  justifiable.  If  the  Pilgrim  Fathers  could 
have  landed  at  Kansas  City  instead  of  Plym- 
outh Rock,  it  would  have  been  immensely 
better.  The  first  settlers  would  have  had 
prairie  land  quite  ready  for  the  plow  on 
which  to  live.  The  colonies  would  have 
spread  over  the  Mississippi  Valley,  with  their 

27 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

cattle  ranges  in  the  semi-arid  Great  Plains. 
As  more  land  became  a  necessity,  they  would 
have  worked  their  way  into  the  forests  of  In- 
diana, Missouri,  Wisconsin  and  Minnesota — 
and  finally,  after  densely  peopling  the  prairies 
of  Iowa,  Nebraska,  Kansas  and  the  Dakotas, 
and  rich  forest  plains  of  Indiana,  Kentucky, 
Ohio,  Oklahoma,  Missouri,  Arkansas  and 
Tennessee,  the  black  lands  of  Mississippi  and 
Alabama,  the  fertile  Mississippi  Delta  from 
Cairo  to  the  Gulf,  and  the  coastal  plain  of 
Texas,  the  frontier  states  of  the  Atlantic  Coast 
would  have  been  reached  by  the  lumbermen 
and  pioneers.  New  England  would  not  yet 
have  been  opened  to  settlement.  The  Appa- 

^btt 

lachian  Mountain  region  would  still  be  a  for- 
est. And  the  Ohio,  the  Cumberland,  the  Up- 
per Mississippi,  the  Tennessee  and  the  Mobile 
would  not  flow  as  they  do,  thick  with  the 
liquid  soil  from  the  fields  of  their  valleys. 
But  coming  in,  as  the  settlers  did,  from  the 
east,  they  were  forced  to  lay  waste  the  forests. 
By  the  destruction  of  the  forests  we  have 
bared  the  soil  in  the  very  regions  which  should 

28 


THE    RAW    MATERIAL   OF    MAN 

have  been  left  forested.  We  have  stripped  the 
deck  of  our  air-ship  to  the  action  of  the 
moving  elements,  so  that  the  dust  of  life  is 
being  swept  off  into  the  ocean  where  it  may  do 
good  to  some  living  creatures,  after  man  has 
disappeared,  but  can  never  again  be  useful  to 
the  present  passengers  of  the  ship,  or  their 
children.  The  Bible  says  that  we  are  made  of 
the  dust  of  the  earth.  So  we  are.  We  can  exist 
only  so  long  as  the  supply  of  dust  lasts.  If  we 
have  descendants  they  must  be  formed  of  it. 
And  we  see  it  wasting  off  into  the  oceans  as  if 
it  did  not  concern  us  at  all! 

The  wastage  of  soil  in  the  streams  of  the 
United  States  is  610,000,000  cubic  yards  a 
year.  A  cubic  yard  is  a  wagon-load.  If  we 
were  wickedly  throwing  this  mother-stuff  of 
men  into  the  sea  as  rapidly  as  we  are  letting 
it  wash  in,  and  had  a  year's  loss  loaded  on 
wagons  waiting  to  dump  at  the  pier-head,  al- 
lowing one  team  to  the  rod,  the  string  of  teams 
waiting  to  unload  would  reach  seventy-six 
times  around  the  world!  So  fast  are  we  al- 
lowing to  be  undone  the  thing  which  it  took 

29 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

all  the  cosmic  forces  millions  of  years  to  do. 
Not  all  erosion  is  waste.  Slow  erosion  is  nec- 
essary. But  the  destructive  erosion  of  which 
we  are  speaking  is  a  peril  to  the  nations. 

There  are  great  nations  which  have  so  culti- 
vated their  lands,  that  no  such  waste  occurs. 
They  are  nations  which  have  kept  up  the  fer- 
tility of  great  areas  through  four  thousand 
years  of  constant  extraction  of  food  and  cloth- 
ing and  shelter  for  man.  And  those  nations 
only  which  can  do  this,  are  fit  for  the  owner- 
ship of  the  ship  on  which  we  sail.  All  others 
are  mere  ruiners  and  cumberers  of  the  Earth. 
Is  it  not  time  for  us  to  begin  if  we  are  to 
qualify  as  passengers  on  the  good  ship  Earth? 
God  will  surely  throw  us  overboard  if  we  do 
not  meet  the  demands. 

These  nations — the  Oriental  peoples  of 
which  the  Chinese  and  Japanese  are  the  best 
examples — are  quartered  on  those  portions  of 
the  decks  of  the  good  ship  Earth  where  hu- 
man beings  are  most  numerous.  Some  Euro- 
peans are  almost  as  good  husbandmen,  and 
live  as  parts  of  dense  populations,  too.  We 

30 


THE    RAW    MATERIAL    OF    MAN 

have  had  only  a  hundred  years  or  so  in  which 
to  prove  our  unfitness  for  the  ownership  of 
fertile  lands ;  and  we  have  gone  far  to  prove 
it  by  ruining  large  areas  of  good  soil — and 
the  ruin  is  going  on  faster  now  than  ever  be- 
fore. 

We  have  had  several  periods  of  public  ap- 
prehensiveness  on  account  of  the  immigration 
of  Asiatics  into  this  country.  We  have  adopted 
the  policy  of  keeping  them  out.  The  smug- 
gling trade  used  to  be  confined  to  the  importa- 
tion of  goods ;  but  now  men  are  smuggled  in. 
The  smuggling  of  Chinamen  is  a  regular  trade 
among  the  lawless  of  our  Pacific  Coast  and 
along  the  Canadian  and  Mexican  frontiers. 
The  Japanese,  too,  have  shown  evidences  of  a 
desire  to  come  to  this  country  in  large  num- 
bers. Koreans,  Hindus,  Chinese  and  Japanese 
are  knocking  at  the  gates  of  all  the  sparsely 
settled  countries  and  asking  to  be  let  in.  The 
yellow  peril  is  a  reality  to  our  Pacific  states,  to 
Western  Canada,  to  Australasia  and  South 
Africa.  The  Asiatics  wish  to  move  from 
lands  which  seem  to  be  overpopulated  to  lands 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

which  are  rich  in  plant  food,  have  good  cli- 
mates and  not  too  many  inhabitants.  The 
deepest  thinkers  are  of  the  opinion  that  this 
tendency  on  the  part  of  large  populations  to 
move  is  no  less  important,  no  less  fateful,  now 
than  it  was  when  the  same  tendencies  on  the 
part  of  the  same  peoples  hurled  wave  after 
wave  of  war  on  Rome  and  destroyed  her.  Will 
Asiatic-exclusion  laws  always  protect  against 
these  movements?  Before  considering  these 
most  vital  things  more  in  detail,  let  us  see 
what  there  is  in  a  soil  which  makes  it  able  to 
support  dense  populations.  If  it  is  a  property 
which  remains  forever,  then  these  nations 
may  be  able  to  stay  where  they  are,  and  leave 
the  rest  of  us  in  peace.  But  if  it  is  something 
which  is  taken  from  the  soil  by  use,  then  these 
massed  millions  may  sometime  have  to  move 
or  starve. 

It  is  this  property  and  this  only  which  now 
concerns  us — the  fitness  of  the  soil  to  furnish 
food  for  plants — in  order  that  the  plants  may 
in  turn  furnish  food  for  animals.  Life  is  the 
vapor  that  distends  for  the  moment  the  bubble 

3? 


THE    RAW    MATERIAL    OF    MAN 

called  an  animal  or  a  vegetable  or  a  man;  and 
good  soil  is  a  soil  from  which  that  vapor  can 
freely  emanate.  Protoplasm  is  the  only  thing 
that  lives;  and  good  soil  is  the  soil  that  can 
furnish  to  the  protoplasm  of  the  plants  the 
food  from  which  the  protoplasm  can  build  up 
animals. 

It  is  possible  to  tell  just  what  the  things  are 
that  the  plants  need.  They  are  ten  substances, 
all  of  which  are  found  in  any  good  soil — 
carbon,  hydrogen,  oxygen,  phosphorus,  potas- 
sium, nitrogen,  sulphur,  calcium,  iron  and 
magnesium.  Most  of  these  you  can  see  in 
some  form  in  any  drug-store,  or  about  the 
house.  Soot  is  carbon;  illuminating  gas  is 
mostly  hydrogen;  oxygen  is  the  vital  princi- 
ple of  the  air,  and  is  given  as  a  gas  to  some 
patients  by  physicians;  phosphorus  is  what 
glows  in  the  dark  when  you  rub  a  damp  match 
on  your  hand;  potassium  is  a  soft  metal  which 
gives  the  name  to  common  potash;  nitrogen 
is  a  gas,  hard  to  obtain  pure,  but  which  forms 
the  bulk  of  the  air,  and  is  important  in  com- 
pounds the  names  of  which  begin  with  "ni- 

33 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

trous",  "nitric",  or  "nitro";  sulphur  every- 
body knows  about;  calcium  is  a  brilliant,  lus- 
trous, light-yellow  element,  which  combined 
with  oxygen  forms  ordinary  quicklime,  and 
with  carbon  is  the  carbide  of  the  acetylene 
lamp;  iron  we  all  know,  but  rarely  see  chem- 
ically pure;  and  magnesium  is  the  chief  ele- 
ment in  common  magnesia,  but  is  not  often 
seen  pure  outside  of  chemical  laboratories. 

Doctor  Cyril  Hopkins,  of  the  University  of 
Illinois,  is  a  great  authority  on  soils,  and  stu- 
dents of  agriculture  under  him  have  made  of 
his  name  a  rigmarole  by  which  to  remember 
these  necessary  elements  of  plant  food.  This 
formula  is  made  up  of  the  chemical  symbols 
for  the  elements. 

"C  Hopk'ns  CaFe  Mg"  is  the  rigmarole. 
The  boys  say  it  means  "C.  Hopkins,  Cafe, 
mighty  good."  The  only  mysterious  thing 
about  the  rigmarole  to  the  ordinary  reader 
will  be  the  meaning  of  the  letters  which  are 
not  the  initials  of  the  English  names  of  the 
elements  for  which  they  stand.  "C",  "H",  "O" 
and  "P"  are  easy.  "K"  is  potassium.  All  the 

34 


THE    RAW   MATERIAL    OF    MAN 

rest  are  easy  until  we  come  to  "Fe"  which 
means  iron.  These  are  the  things  which  the 
spirit  of  time  put  into  the  soil  so  that  plants 
might  grow.  When  any  one  of  them  is  absent 
the  land  is  a  desert.  And  when  the  deck  be- 
comes a  desert,  the  passengers  have  to  move 
or  starve. 

Only  four  of  these  elements  give  the  farmer 
any  trouble  on  account  of  their  scarcity — ni- 
trogen, phosphorus,  sulphur  and  potassium. 
All  the  rest  are  found  in  plenty.  And  the 
passengers  on  the  good  ship  Earth  have 
chosen  their  quarters  on  her  broad  decks  with 
reference  to  the  presence  in  the  deck-dust — 
called  soil — of  these  four  things — nitrogen, 
phosphorus,  sulphur  and  potassium.  Each 
presents  a  wonderful  world  problem — a  prob- 
lem in  our  future  peace,  as  well  as  our  future 
plenty — great  enough  for  a  book — a  library  of 
books. 


CHAPTER  V 

FOUR  PROBLEMS  OF   FOOD 

THEY  say  the  chameleon  feeds  on  air. 
Well,  so  do  we.   And  this  calls  to  mind 
a  true  story. 

Once  there  lived  on  the  good  ship  Earth 
— and  still  lives  for  aught  I  know — an  Eng- 
lishman named  North — Colonel  North,  "The 
Nitrate  King".  Of  all  the  earth-beings  who 
have  gained  dominion  over  their  fellow  pas- 
sengers on  this  great  globular  Zeppelin,  Colo- 
nel North  once  seemed  to  have  the  greatest 
dominion — greater  than  that  of  Rockefeller; 
or  Cecil  Rhodes,  of  South  Africa;  or  Clive, 
the  conqueror  of  Hindustan;  or  the  "Gentle- 
men Adventurers"  of  the  Hudson's  Company. 
Greater  than  the  dominion  of  Genghis  Khan, 
of  Tartary,  Attila  the  Hun,  Alaric  the  Goth, 
or  Genseric  the  Vandal.  For  it  seemed  at  one 
time  as  if  Colonel  North,  the  nitrate  king, 

36 


FOUR  PROBLEMS  OF  FOOD 

and  his  descendants  would  be  able  through 
their  ownership  of  the  nitrate  beds  of  Chili  to 
make  all  their  fellow  passengers  buy  nitrates 
of  them,  until  the  beds  should  be  exhausted; 
and  then  all  the  passengers  of  the  good  ship 
Earth — after  moving  about  from  one  nitro- 
gen-exhausted place  to  another,  and  warring 
and  wasting  and  ravaging  as  peoples  always 
do  when  they  move — were  to  starve  together, 
— for  lack  of  nitrates! 

What  greater  deed  could  a  monopolist  hope 
to  achieve  than  to  get  hold  of  something  which 
God  made  for  all  of  us — who  are  all  in  the 
same  boat  remember, — sell  it  to  us  at  starva- 
tion prices  and  lord  it  over  the  rest  of  us;  even 
though  at  the  last  we  should  use  up  the  sup- 
ply, and  all  starve?  Truly,  a  gigantic  and 
characteristically  nineteenth-century  concep- 
tion! 

The  thing  the  colonel  had  cornered  was  ni- 
trogen for  the  growth  of  crops.  Nitrogen  is 
one  of  the  ten  elements  of  plant  food  that  must 
be  found  by  the  roots  of  the  plants  or  they  die. 
And  all  animal  life  is  based  on  plant  life— and 

37 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

we  passengers  are  animals.  So  there  you  are  I 
Of  these  ten  elements,  only  three  or  four,  as 
we  have  seen,  are  often  scarce  in  the  soil — ni- 
trogen, phosphorus,  potassium  and  probably 
sulphur;  and  the  colonel  had  the  nitrogen — or 
so  he  thought.  For  though  seventy-five  per 
cent,  of  the  air  in  which  every  plant  grows  is 
nitrogen,  the  crops  can  not  use  it.  It  is  "free" 
nitrogen,  and  the  crops  can't  eat  it  unless  it  is 
"fixed" — that  is,  tied  up  with  some  other  chem- 
ical element.  There  are  75,000,000  pounds  of 
nitrogen  in  the  air  which  rests  on  every  acre 
of  land;  and  the  crop  dies  for  want  of  it  unless 
it  is  "fixed"  or  tied  up  with  something  else  in 
chemical  bonds!  A  soil  is  in  good  condition 
for  crops  if  it  possesses  two  tons  of  this  75,000- 

000  pounds  per  acre — but  how  to  get  it? 
Science  was  in  despair.  But  Colonel  North, 

1  suppose,  was  in  high  feather.    For  in  Chili 
nitrogen  has  accumulated  in  the  form  of  ni- 
trates in  the  soil  until  that  dry  region  is  the 
great  storehouse  of  the  fixed  nitrogen  of  this 
great  air-ship  Earth  in  which  we  are  all  pas- 
sengers, going  we  know  not  where.  Sir  Will- 

38 


FOUR  PROBLEMS  OF  FOOD       , 

iam  Crookes  put  on  his  black  cap  and  gave  out 
the  sentence  of  science.  This  was  the  verdict: 
A  good  soil  possesses  only  from  2,500  to 
10,000  pounds  of  nitrogen  per  acre.  A  good 
crop  takes  from  this  store  from  75  to  400 
pounds  per  acre,  depending  on  the  crop.  Call 
it  75  so  as  to  scare  ourselves  as  little  as  possi- 
ble, and  give  every  acre  10,000  pounds,  which 
is  twice  what  we  can  count  on,  and  where 
are  we?  Why,  we  can  see  our  way  to  134 
crops,  and  a  part  of  another.  But  there's  Colo- 
nel North  with  his  paper  title  to  the  nitrate 
parts  of  the  decks  of  the  ship  which  clearly 
belong  in  common  to  all  of  us — how  about 
Colonel  North  and  his  nitrate  beds?  Well, 
said  science,  at  the  present  rate  of  shipments, 
they  will  last  only  a  few  decades,  at  most- 
some  said  thirty  years,  some  three  hundred — 
because  nobody  knows  just  how  much  Colonel 
North  had.  And  then?  Why,  then,  with  that 
illimitable  sea  of  nitrogen  about  our  heads, 
we  shall  all  gradually  Hie  out  of  starvation! 
There  was  no  way  out  of  it — human  life  is 
based  on  plant  life,  and  plant  life  on  nitrogen, 

39 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

and  the  fixed  nitrogen  supply  is  approaching 
exhaustion.  So  said  science  through  Sir  Will- 
iam Crookes. 

But  the  good  farmers  of  the  world  always 
felt  that  Sir  William  was  a  bit  off.  They  knew 
that  when  they  planted  clover,  beans,  vetch, 
peanuts,  or  any  other  leguminous — that  is  pod- 
bearing — crop,  and  plowed  it  under,  the  soil 
seemed  richer  in  something  afterward.  Sci- 
ence said  that  that  couldn't  be.  "For,"  said 
science,  "all  the  nitrogen  the  legume  gets,  it 
gets  from  the  soil,  and  you  can't  get  any  more 
by  plowing  back  what  you've  just  taken  out." 
Moreover  the  scientists  "proved"  by  experi- 
ment that  the  pod-bearers  don't  secrete  nitro- 
gen from  the  air. 

"But,"  said  the  good  farmer,  scratching  his 
head,  "it  is  richer,  for  all  that!" 

"Nonsense!"  said  science. 

And  then  the  most  wonderful  discovery  of 
agricultural  science  convinced  the  wise  men 
that  the  farmer  was  right.  Science  found  that 
on  the  roots  of  these  leguminous  plants,  are  lit- 
tle knobs  like  tiny  potatoes,  and  in  the  knobs, 

40 


FOUR    PROBLEMS    OF    FOOD 

millions  upon  millions  of  little  plants  called 
bacteria,  so  small  as  to  be  invisible  to  the  naked 
eye.  We  used  to  think  they  were  disease-galls ! 
Suddenly  through  the  patient  researches  of 
science,  the  mistakes  of  science  were  cor- 
rected; and  we  were  informed  that  these  bac- 
teria, unlike  the  big  plants,  have  the  power  to 
take  free  nitrogen  out  of  the  air  in  the  ground, 
and  fix  it  so  the  other  plants  can  get  it! 

Science  threw  up  its  hat.  We  needn't  starve 
for  lack  of  nitrogen!  Colonel  North's  descend- 
ants can't  look  forward  to  the  time  when  the 
other  passengers  on  the  good  ship  Earth  will 
come  crawling  on  their  bellies,  begging  ni- 
trates, supplicating  for  the  privilege  of  living 
on  board  a  while  longer.  We  can  get  our  ni- 
trogen out  of  the  air. 

When  God  started  to  build  a  world,  he 
started  from  the  bottom.  When  the  first  plants 
were  evolved,  they  had  to  be  plants  which 
could  get  nitrogen  from  the  air,  because  ex- 
cept for  a  small  amount  deposited  through  the 
action  of  lightning,  there  was  none  in  the 
rocks.  The  first  plants  were  one-celled  plants 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

which  could  do  this.  When  the  clover  began 
business  the  bacteria  came  around  and  asked 
the  privilege  of  building  houses  in  which  to 
live  on  the  clover  roots.  "Certainly,"  said  the 
clover,  "but  youVe  got  to  pay  rent."  "All 
right,"  said  the  bacteria,  "we'll  furnish  the  ni- 
trogen, if  you'll  look  out  for  the  other  table 
board,  and  the  matter  of  lodging.  Is  it  a  go?" 
"It's  a  go!"  said  the  legume;  and  they  have 
been  partners  ever  since,  each  living  on  the 
other,  and  all  taking  nitrogen  out  of  the  air 
for  themselves  and  other  plants. 

In  the  crust  of  the  earth  there  is  only  a  trace 
of  nitrogen,  and  all  there  is,  as  far  as  I  know, 
is  in  the  soil.  I  suppose  that  all  of  it  which  is 
in  the  soil  has  been  taken  from  the  air  by  the 
bacteria  and  fungi — Colonel  North's  and  all 
the  rest.  If  these  tiny,  tiny  passengers  had  not 
come  aboard  millions  of  years  before  us,  we 
could  never  have  come  into  being.  Despise 
not  the  day  of  small  things.  The  basis  of  all 
life  is  too  small  to  be  seen  by  the  microscope. 

I  often  wonder  what  we  should  have  done 
about  North's  monopoly,  if  Crookes  had  not 

42 


FOUR  PROBLEMS  OF  FOOD 

been  mistaken.  Would  the  other  passengers 
have  recognized  his  paper  title  to  the  power 
to  starve  them?  I  wonder!  The  courts,  of 
course,  would  have  stood  up  for  Colonel 
North. 

It  is,  therefore,  the  clover-plant  and  its 
brethren,  the  peas,  beans,  alfalfas  and  the  like, 
that  will  save  the  passengers  on  the  good  ship 
Earth  from  being  obliged  to  go  crusading  in 
search  of  soils  provided  with  nitrogen. 

I  am  trying  to  look  at  some  of  the  larger 
problems  of  the  world  as  concretely  as  pos- 
sible. We  are  passengers  on  a  huge  ship  driv- 
ing through  space  as  one  of  Zeppelin's  air- 
ships drives  through  air,  save  that  we  know 
not  what  guides  us,  and  that  we  spin  like  a 
curved  baseball,  and  whirl  round  and  round 
the  sun  from  which,  by  wireless  transmissions 
over  the  ninety-five  millions  of  miles  of  space 
which  separate  us  from  our  planetary  "con- 
trol", we  get  our  light,  heat  and  power. 

We  are  all  in  the  same  boat.  We  did  not 
make  the  boat — we  ourselves  are  made  from 
the  dust  on  the  planking  of  her  'decks.  We  are 

43 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

divided  up  into  nations,  clans,  tribes,  classes 
and  races ;  but  we  are  all  tenants  of  the  decks 
of  the  ship  Earth.  Looked  at  as  an  original 
question,  what  are  our  rights  and  what  our 
duties  to  our  fellow  passengers,  and  the  great 
property — for  the  ship  is  really  our  property 
— which  our  children  must  be  made  of,  and 
live  upon? 

We  have  learned  that  as  animals  we  must 
live  either  on  plants,  or  on  other  animals 
which  have  been  made  of  plants — plants  which 
break  out  in  a  green  rash  all  over  the  decks  of 
the  old  boat.  And  that  there  are  ten  things 
which  must  be  found  in  soil  or  air  before  a  field 
can  nourish  plants — every  one  of  the  ten :  car- 
bon, hydrogen,  oxygen,  phosphorus,  potas- 
sium, nitrogen,  sulphur,  calcium,  iron  and 
magnesium.  Of  these  there  are  only  three  or 
four  that  need  give  us  any  uneasiness — nitro- 
gen, phosphorus  and  potassium — and  probably 
sulphur.  Not  that  these  are  any  more  neces- 
sary than  the  other  six  or  seven,  but  that  they 
are  soil  elements  that  are  scarce,  and  the  using 

44 


FOUR  PROBLEMS  OF  FOOD 

up  of  which  would  puf  an  end  to  the  human 
race  by  putting  an  end  to  vegetation. 

We  have  seen  that  there  was  once  a  scare 
for  fear  that  the  nitrogen  would  soon  be  ex- 
hausted; and  that  we  discovered  that  certain 
plants  of  the  clover  tribe  are  taking  it  from  the 
air  all  the  time  when  given  a  chance,  and  stor- 
ing it  in  the  soil.  So  that  scare  ended. 

Let  us  now  look  into  the  hold  of  the  ship 
and  see  how  we  are  supplied  with  potassium. 

But  first,  what  is  potassium?  It  is  the  ele- 
ment which  gives  its  name  to  potash — which 
any  one  may  make  from  the  lye  of  wood  ashes. 
It  is  found  in  the  ashes  of  any  field  crop,  when 
the  plant  is  burned.  It  is  plain,  then,  if  it  is  a 
part  of  every  one  of  these  plants,  that  it  must 
exist  where  the  plant  can  reach  it,  or  no  crop 
can  grow.  Potassium  is  not  found  in  the  air 
as  is  nitrogen — so  it  must  be  obtained  from  the 
soil. 

In  the  grain  of  a  hundred-bushel  crop  of 
corn,  there  are  nineteen  pounds  of  potassium. 
An  average  soil  contains  enough  at  this  rate  to 

45 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

make  2,500  crops.  No  need  to  worry  then? 
Well,  is  it  any  less  serious  for  the  race  to  end 
for  lack  of  food  in  2,500  years,  than  in  one 
hundred?  Or  be  sent  crusading  and  slaying 
after  new  lands  in  the  year  A.  D.  10,000  rather 
than  A.  D.  2,000?  If  we  are  wasting  what  the 
passengers  must  some  day  need,  does  it  make 
any  real  difference  that  we  shall  not  be  pres- 
ent to  witness  their  sufferings?  It  does  not 
seem  so  to  me.  I  think  we  should  be  as  alive 
to  suffering  in  Europe  or  Asia  to-day,  as  if  it 
were  in  the  next  room ;  and  as  solicitous  for  the 
happinesss  of  the  world's  passengers  a  thou- 
sand years  hence,  as  next  week.  Especially  as 
our  acts  make  for  or  against  that  happiness. 

There  are  many  lands  even  now  which  need 
potassium.  We  import  millions  of  dollars  of 
it  annually.  As  "kainite"  and  in  other  forms 
it  is  a  very  important  article  of  commerce. 

The  lands  which  need  it  most,  are  not  yet 
under  cultivation  to  anything  like  the  extent 
which  the  future  will  require.  As  the  passen- 
gers on  the  good  ship  Earth  multiply  and 
need  land,  instead  of  swarming  out  against 

46 


FOUR    PROBLEMS    OF    FOOD 

other  peoples,  they  will,  let  us  hope,  draw  off 
the  water  from  the  lands  that  are  only  just  sub- 
merged and  reclaim  them.  In  other  words, 
we  shall  drain  swamps. 

By  doing  this,  we  may  dry  up  additional 
deck  room  in  the  United  States  so  as  to  add  to 
our  habitable  heritage  an  area  as  big  as  the 
three  states  of  Ohio,  Indiana  and  Illinois — 
about  76,000,000  acres. 

We  often  say  of  a  swamp:  "Drain  it  and  it 
will  be  the  richest  land  in  the  world."  This 
is  always  said,  and  usually  it  is  true.  The  land 
of  swamps  usually  is  rich  in  nitrogen,  in  phos- 
phorus and  most  other  plant  foods.  But  watch 
a  corn-field  in  a  drained  swamp,  and  you  will 
often  see  the  corn  turn  yellow  in  July,  and  you 
will  note  a  failure  of  yield.  This  spot  is  not 
helping  to  feed  the  passengers.  The  swamp 
was  a  peat-bed,  and  lacks  potassium.  So,  as 
we  drain  our  swamps,  and  as  we  exhaust  the 
potash  from  other  lands,  we  shall  need  to  put 
on  the  fields  untold  tons  of  it.  And  we  do  now 
buy  it  by  the  millions  of  pounds. 

Whence  comes  it?     Nitrogen,  we   recall, 

47 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

comes  mostly  from  Chili,  and  the  nitrate  beds 
with  which  Colonel  North,  the  nitrate  king, 
dreamed  of  ruling  the  world  in  that  dreadful 
day  when  the  world  should  crawl  to  him  on  its 
belly  for  nitrogen — that  great  and  awful  day 
of  the  Lord. 

Is  there  a  potash  king,  then?  Yes,  and  no. 
If  there  is  one,  he  is  Kaiser  Wilhelm,  of  Ger- 
many. The  great  potassium  beds  of  the  world 
are  in  his  realm.  It  lies  there,  in  beds  5,000 
feet  deep — enough  for  the  world  for  thou- 
sands of  years,  if  there  were  no  other  place 
from  which  to  get  it.  There  are  no  such  beds 
known  elsewhere. 

But  the  kaiser  dreams  no  such  dream  as 
that  of  Colonel  North;  for  he  knows  that  we 
can  get  potash  elsewhere.  Not  so  cheaply,  nor 
in  such  accessible  masses,  but  we  can  get  it. 
There  are  plenty  of  rocks  that  contain  from 
six  to  eight  per  cent,  of  potassium — we  may  be 
able  to  grind  them  and  extract  their  potassium 
and  put  it  on  the  land. 

And  did  you  ever  run  over  from  the  Cali- 
fornia coast  to  Santa  Catalina  Island  for  an 

48 


FOUR  PROBLEMS  OF  FOOD 

outing?  If  so,  did  you  notice  the  great  fields 
of  a  water  plant  called  "kelp"  that  grows  in 
huge  beds  all  along  that  coast?  Well,  the  de- 
partment of  agriculture  has  discovered  that 
we  have  in  this  weed  a  possible  source  of  pot- 
ash, to  the  value  of  $40,000,000  a  year,  if  we 
choose  to  extract  it.  And  out  of  the  weed,  too, 
would  come  by-products  like  iodine,  glue, 
shellac  and  paper.  Probably  these  things  will 
in  part  or  in  whole  pay  for  the  work,  and  the 
potash  may  be  clear  gain.  Isn't  it  fine  to  dis- 
cover so  much  food  of  which  we  were  unaware 
in  the  sea?  For  potassium  is  food,  remember 
— when  the  crops  have  worked  it  up  for  us. 
The  geological  survey,  too,  have  recently 
found  small  deposits  of  potash  in  the  govern- 
ment domain — enough  for  thirty  years. 

The  German  potash  princes  and  the  Ger- 
man government  have  been  a  little  stingy  about 
their  potash,  lately.  We  have  had  a  fuss  with 
them  about  it.  And  I  don't  blame  them  for 
looking  closely  after  so  important  a  matter. 
But  I'd  like  to  see  our  government  develop 
our  potash  industry  by  opening  up  our  mines, 

49 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

and  setting  up  works  to  make  potash  out  of 
kelp — for  the  benefit  of  the  human  race,  whose 
very  flesh  must  be  made  of  the  planking  of  the 
decks  of  the  good  ship  Earth.  I'd  like  to  see 
shiploads  of  potash  come  from  the  kelp  of 
California  to  the  hungry  lands  of  the  east, 
through  the  Panama  Canal,  from  those  gov- 
ernment works. 

There  are  pastures  in  Australia,  of  a  kind 
of  herbage  called  "kangaroo  grass".  Live 
stock  fed  on  this  grass  for  too  long  a  time 
suffer  from  a  fatal  disease  of  the  skeleton, 
called  by  the  farmers  "bone  disease".  The 
cause  of  it  has  been  a  mystery  until  lately. 

Scientists  have  known  that  the  soil  is  defi- 
cient in  phosphorus — but  they  did  not  know 
that  the  plants  growing  out  of  it  were  also 
poor  in  this  element.  Recently  it  has  been  dis- 
covered that  these  plants  have  adjusted  them- 
selves to  the  lack  of  phosphorus  so  that  they 
have  only  one-tenth  of  the  phosphoric  acid  in 
their  make-up  that  crops  must  have  on  which 
animals  with  bony  skeletons  can  live. 

50 


FOUR  PROBLEMS  OF  FOOD 

The  bone  disease  is  thus  accounted  for. 
Phosphorus  is  an  essential  part  of  bone,  as 
well  as  of  blood  and  of  flesh.  Any  race  which 
possesses  "bone  and  sinew",  or  "good  red 
blood"  must  feed  on  plants  receiving  phos- 
phorus from  the  soil,  or  on  animals  which 
have  done  so — so  dependent  are  we  who  are 
made  in  the  image  of  God,  on  the  very  dust 
beneath  our  feet,  for  our  moral  as  well  as 
physical  existence.  If  the  soil  on  which  a  na- 
tion lives  loses  its  phosphorus,  that  nation  must 
die — or  go  out  killing  and  ravaging,  seeking 
other  lands. 

Animals  have  been  fed,  as  an  experiment2 
on  foods  deficient  in  phosphorus.  For  a  while 
they  seemed  to  do  well.  Then  they  collapsed. 
It  takes  only  three  months  of  a  ration  without 
phosphorus  to  wreck  an  animal.  Individual 
creatures  were  killed  after  a  month  of  this 
diet,  and  it  was  found  that  the  flesh  was  taking 
the  phosphate — for  the  phosphorus  exists  in 
the  body  in  that  form — from  the  bones  to  sup- 
ply its  need.  In  other  words,  the  body  was  eat- 
ing its  own  bones!  When  this  process  had 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

robbed  the  bones  to  the  limit,  the  collapse 
came,  and  the  animal  could  never  recover. 

Now  as  passengers  on  the  good  ship  Earth, 
it  will  be  worth  our  while  to  look  into  the 
hold  of  the  ship  and  see.  how  much  phosphorus 
the  cosmic  forces  put  into  the  bunkers  when 
they  flung  us  spinning  out  into  space,  under 
wireless  control,  to  whirl  we  know  not  where. 
Shall  we  find  enough?  Are  we  as  a  race 
doomed  after  many  famines  and  pestilences, 
and  wars  and  rumors  of  wars  to  die — perhaps 
of  starvation,  perhaps  of  bone  disease — and  to 
leave  the  ship  lifeless,  or  to  plants  like  those 
of  Australia  which  have  learned  to  do  with 
little  phosphorus,  or  to  boneless  animals,  fitted 
for  a  similar  phosphateless  life? 

This  is  the  indispensable  element  in  which 
we  find  the  soils  of  the  world  poorest.  In  the 
original  rocks  there  are  only  eleven  hun- 
dredths  of  one  per  cent,  of  it  on  the  average. 
Good  virgin  soils  are  even  poorer  than  this. 
It  is  a  good  soil  indeed  which  has  2,000 
pounds  of  phosphorus  per  acre  in  the  top 
seven  inches  of  soil.  So  we  see  that  in  the 

52 


FOUR  PROBLEMS  OF  FOOD 

process  of  making  soil,  a  large  part  of  the 
original  stock  is  lost. 

Where  we  have  worked  over  the  soil — the 
dust  on  the  planks  of  the  good  ship  Earth — 
until  it  is  said  to  be  "exhausted"  we  find  that  it 
is  usually  the  phosphorus  which  is  gone — or 
nearly  so.  Old  soils  from  the  level  coastal 
plain  of  Virginia,  said  to  be  too  poor  to  work, 
test  as  low  as  340  pounds  of  phosphorus  in  the 
upper  2,000,000  pounds  of  soil.  The  worn- 
out  fields  of  Asia  are  very  poor  in  phosphorus. 
Some  depleted  soils  in  India  have  been  found 
to  show  only  what  the  chemists  call  a  "trace" 
of  it — too  little  to  measure. 

In  the  youth  of  the  race,  these  old  fields 
made  men — but  they  are  now  deserts. 

"They  say  the  Lion  and  the  Lizard  keep 
The  Courts  where  Jamshyd  gloried  and  drank 

deep: 
And  Bahram,  that  great  Hunter — the  Wild 

Ass 
Stamps  o'er  his  Head,  but  can  not  break  his 

Sleep!" 

And  the  lion  and  the  lizard  will  return  to 
53 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

keep  the  courts  where  we  reign  and  glory  and 
drink  deep — when  the  phosphorus  of  the  soil 
goes.  And  then  the  lion  and  the  lizard  will 
themselves  go  the  same  road.  And  then  the 
good  ship  Earth  will  sail  the  illimitable 
fields  of  space  without  passengers!  Is  this 
what  the  fates  have  in  store  for  us? 

A  fair  crop  of  wheat  takes  from  each  acre 
of  the  deck  room  devoted  to  its  culture,  12.5 
pounds  of  phosphoric  oxide;  barley,  15 
pounds;  oats,  12;  corn,  18,  and  other  crops  ac- 
cordingly. So  even  our  rich  lands  possess  only 
enough  in  the  upper  eight  inches  to  mature 
from  1 60  to  250  crops.  There  is  phosphorus 
deeper  than  that,  and  there  are  richer  soils. 
But  where  fields  like  those  of  Japan,  China, 
Korea  and  Manchuria  have  been  farmed  for 
forty  centuries,  we  find  the  farmers  now 
obliged  to  put  back  every  year  as  much  of  this 
element  as  they  have  taken  away,  or  more.  A 
single  year's  failure  to  do  this  on  their  part, 
and  these  nations  would  begin  to  starve. 

This  depletion  of  the  soil  makes  a  full  and 
enlightened  life  to  be  derived  from  it  almost 

54 


FOUR  PROBLEMS  OF  FOOD 

out  of  the  question.  The  peoples  who  are 
forced  by  necessity  to  return  to  the  soil  all  they 
take  from  it  are  bowed  down  in  servitude  to 
the  crops.  They  carry  ordure  in  buckets  and 
make  soup  of  it  for  the  rice.  They  seek  for 
dung  on  the  highways  as  for  a  treasure,  and 
look  upon  a  latrine  as  an  Iowa  farmer  looks 
upon  a  bank.  They  climb  mountains  to  pluck 
herbage  which  they  thrust  down  into  the  mud 
of  the  fields  with  their  feet.  They  carefully 
lift  the  mud  from  the  bottoms  of  streams  and 
canals  and  carry  it  to  the  fields  for  the  little 
fertility  it  holds.  They  reap  the  aquatic  plants 
from  waterways  as  we  reap  harvest  fields,  and 
compost  them  for  the  crops.  They  carry  the 
very  earth  of  the  fields  to  their  houses,  and 
mix  ashes,  night-soil  and  other  fertilizers  with 
it,  carrying  it  back  in  the  proper  season  to 
feed  the  crops.  All  this  is  wonderful  and  ad- 
mirable as  agriculture — but  where  the  books 
of  the  fields  are  so  strictly  balanced  as  to  fer- 
tility the  amount  of  human  life  expended  on 
the  up-keep  of  the  land  is  almost  incredibly 
near  to  the  volume  of  vitality  which  the  prod- 

SS 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

uce  of  the  field  will  sustain.  This  is  the  ex- 
pression in  terms  of  fertility  of  the  economic 
pressure  on  the  oldest  farms  in  the  world.  It 
tells  in  terms  of  human  life  what  happens 
when  the  deposits  in  the  bank  of  the  soil  have 
been  all  checked  out  by  farming. 

Yet  we,  the  "civilized",  the  "progressive" 
nation,  waste  our  precious  store  like  drunken 
sailors.  The  limiting  element  in  even  our  rich 
Mississippi  Valley  soils  is  already  phosphorus. 
Fifty  years  of  our  awful  robbery  of  the  store- 
rooms of  the  race,  takes  out  a  third  of  the 
phosphorus — a  short  fifty  years!  After  credit- 
ing the  farms  of  Wisconsin  with  the  return  of 
everything  the  farmers  put  back,  the  net  loss 
per  year  in  phosphorus  to  that  state  is  15,000,- 
ooo  pounds,  worth  at  five  cents  a  pound,  $750,- 
ooo.  Our  great  "balance  of  trade"  of  which 
we  so  much  boast,  and  with  so  little  reason, 
would  look  much  smaller  if  we  deducted  from 
it  the  phosphorus  sent  away — the  actual  land 
— in  the  grains  and  meats  and  fruits. 

Phosphorus  does  not  exist  in  the  air,  and 
being  an  element,  it  can  not  be  artificially  pro- 

56 


FOUR    PROBLEMS    OF    FOOD 

duced.  We  must  find  it  if  we  get  it.  We  find 
it  in  fossil  guano  and  in  the  phosphate  rocks. 
There  are  in  South  Carolina  3,000,000  tons  of 
good  phosphate  rock,  which  will  pay  to  grind; 
in  Florida  166,000,000  tons ;  in  Tennessee,  160,- 
000,000  tons.  We  are  mining  this  and  export- 
ing it  to  restore  the  depleted  soils  of  Europe 
— for  profit.  It  has  been  estimated  that  all  this 
store  in  our  Southern  phosphate  fields  will  be 
gone  by  1932 — probably  it  will  vanish  before. 
We  can  grind  poorer  rock,  but  there  is  a  limit 
to  the  lowness  of  grade  which  will  return  as 
much  food  as  we  shall  expend  in  grinding  it. 

Perhaps  there  is  a  region  where  nature  has 
placed  her  store  of  phosphorus,  as  she  did  in 
Chili  in  the  case  of  nitrogen,  and  in  Germany 
for  potash?  There  are  many  rocks  still  un- 
explored, and  there  may  be  much  more  phos- 
phate than  we  know  of;  but  aside  from  60,- 
000,000  tons  of  high-grade  in  three  South  Sea 
Islands,  we  know  of  no  great  deposits  save 
what  Uncle  Sam  possesses  in  Idaho,  Wyoming 
and  Utah — the  deposits  the  conservationists 
have  fought  to  keep  them  out  of  private  hands. 

57 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

Uncle  Sam  is  the  Colonel  North  and  the 
Kaiser  Wilhelm  of  phosphorus — with  9,500,- 
000,000  tons  of  good  rock  in  his  bunkers. 

But  no  matter  how  rich  the  rocks  may  be, 
within  any  reasonable  probability,  the  supply 
will  give  out  unless  it  is  rigidly  conserved — 
and  the  race  will  die.  Once  there  were  mil- 
lions of  tons  of  it — called  guano — in  the  drop- 
pings of  sea-birds  on  Pacific  islands.  The 
sea-birds  catch  fish — which  have  much  nitro- 
gen and  phosphorus  in  their  bodies.  These 
fish  pass  through  the  digestive  organs  of  the 
birds,  the  unassimilated  parts  being  dropped 
on  the  islands  where  the  nests  are  made.  The 
old  Peruvians  protected  the  sea-birds  from 
destruction;  for  they  knew  that  these  winged 
benefactors  were  retrieving  from  the  ocean  the 
lost  fertility  of  the  globe. 

But  we  are  civilized,  and  kill  the  birds.  The 
last  men  on  earth  may  be  grouped  about  the 
spots  whose  phosphorus  has  not  been  lost  from 
the  soil — spots  like  the  phosphatic  soils  of  the 
bluegrass  region  of  Kentucky,  and  similar  por- 
tions of  France,  and  some  other  countries ;  and 

58 


FOUR  PROBLEMS  OF  FOOD 

in  regions  kept  populated  by  the  fertility  re- 
trieved from  the  sea  by  billions  of  sea-birds 
bred  for  the  purpose.  But  before  that  time 
comes,  as  unless  we  change  our  ways  it  will, 
the  world  will  tremble  with  the  tread  of 
armed  hosts  leaving  lands  depleted  of  this 
phosphorus,  and  hunting  new  lands. 

For  many  years  we  have  believed  that  there 
are  only  three  elements  of  mineral  plant  food 
which  are  likely  to  give  us  trouble  by  their 
scarcity — phosphorus,  nitrogen  and  potash. 
To  these,  however,  we  must  now  reluctantly 
add  sulphur.  The  analyses  of  plants  on  which 
chemists  relied  as  showing  their  needs  in  sul- 
phur have  been  shown  to  be  unreliable,  be- 
cause of  the  fact  that  this  element  escaped  in 
the  fumes  thrown  off  in  the  chemical  labora- 
tory, and  was  to  some  extent  lost.  We  under- 
estimated the  amount  of  sulphur  taken  out  of 
the  soil  by  the  crops. 

We  were  lulled  into  security,  also,  by  the 
fact  that  sulphur  falls  from  the  skies  in  rain 
and  snow.  At  Madison,  Wisconsin,  where  the 
latest  determinations  have  been  made  by  Hart 

59 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

and  Stevenson,  the  annual  precipitation  of  sul- 
phur in  rain  and  snow  is  from  fifteen  to  twenty 
pounds  per  acre.  This  is  enough  for  the  crops 
if  it  were  all  available;  but  much  of  it  falls 
outside  the  growing  season,  and  a  good  deal  is 
lost  in  the  run-off  of  water  and  carried  away 
by  drainage. 

That  the  supply  is  not  sufficient  for  the  re- 
quirements of  farming  is  shown  by  two  facts. 
The  first  fact  is  that  soils  cropped  for  from 
fifty  to  sixty  years  have  lost  forty  per  cent,  of 
their  original  supply  of  sulphur.  The  second 
is  that  when  sulphur  is  applied  to  the  soil  the 
crops  are  improved,  which  would  not  be  the 
case  if  this  element  were  not  getting  scarce. 

Most  authorities  disagree  with  this  state- 
ment as  to  the  scarcity  of  sulphur.  It  is  a  new 
idea,  and  is  not  yet  generally  accepted.  It 
may  be  an  error.  But,  if  it  does  turn  out  to 
be  scarce,  fortunately,  there  is  no  lack  of  sul- 
phur in  the  earth's  crust.  A  ton  of  gypsum 
contains  about  900  pounds  of  sulphur;  and 
gypsum  is  found  in  enormous  beds  in  most 
parts  of  the  world.  Phosphorus  is  ordinarily 

60 


FOUR    PROBLEMS    OF    FOOD 

applied  either  in  the  form  of  ground  phos- 
phate rock,  or  in  superphosphate,  which  is 
phosphate  rock  treated  with  sulphuric  acid. 
This  latter  fertilizer  carries  from  200  to  300 
pounds  of  sulphur  to  the  ton,  in  addition  to 
its  phosphorus. 

Our  ancestors  used  to  apply  "land  plaster" 
(which  is  ground  gypsum)  to  their  farms  sev- 
enty-five yeafs  ago,  with  good  results.  There 
is  every  reason  to  believe  that  we  shall  be 
obliged  to  return  to  a  modification  of  this 
practise.  The  sulphur  problem  is  not  an  in- 
soluble one,  but  it  calls  for  study,  and  the  res- 
toration of  sulphur  to  the  depleted  soil  is  one 
of  the  tasks  which  confront  the  mariners  who 
navigate  the  good  ship  Earth. 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE  ONLY  THING  WORTH  WORSHIPING—- 
FORCE 

WE  honor  the  man  of  whom  we  can  say 
— "He  does  things."  We  are  not  so 
very  discriminating  as  to  whether  he  does 
things  inherently  good,  or  inherently  bad.  The 
James  brothers  were  very  popular  men  among 
their  neighbors,  as  were  Dick  Turpin  and 
Robin  Hood,  among  theirs  in  Merrie  Eng- 
land. They  did  things. 

Napoleon  was  adored  because  he  did  things 
• — without  reference  to  whether  or  not  they 
were  good  or  bad.  He  murdered  France  and 
was  adored  by  France. 

Women  fawn  on  the  men  who  beat  them. 
The  rape  of  the  Sabine  woman  is  ever  rati- 
fied by  cunnubiality — no  Rome  fails  of  popu- 
lation when  possessed  of  men  like  the  ruthless 
sons  of  Romulus.  The  wolf  breed  conquers  by 

62 


FORCE 

force,  and  love  follows — some  sort  of  love. 
Dogs  lick  always  the  hand  of  a  Bill  Sikes. 

In  all  ages  and  everywhere,  by  a  universal 
instinct,  the  human  being  worships  force.  For 
it  is  all  there  is  in  the  universe  worth  wor- 
shiping. The  instincts  of  men  and  women  are 
always  justified  in  the  court  of  last  resort— 
the  welfare  of  the  race. 

The  sun  has  been  worshiped  more  gener- 
ally and  more  intelligently  than  any  other 
natural  object.  The  ancient  Peruvians  pos- 
sessed the  most  striking  temple  of  the  sun,  but 
Greeks,  Romans,  Parsees,  Norsemen,  Persians 
and  all  the  rest  have  been  sun-worshipers. 
Our  day  of  worship  is  still  Sunday.  And  if  in 
a  really  godless  world,  science  were  called 
upon  to  choose  the  thing  to  deify,  it  would 
choose  force  as  the  god,  and  could  find  no  such 
adequate  representation  of  it  as  the  sun. 

We  used  to  say  that  in  all  the  universe,  there 
are  only  two  actualities,  matter  and  force.  We 
now,  by  the  radium  discoveries,  find  that  mat- 
ter seems  to  be  only  a  form  of  force.  So  our 
minds  are  brought  to  confront  the  apparent 

63 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

proof  that  there  is  only  one  thing  real,  and 
that  is  force.  If  so,  the  blind  worship  of  force 
is  very  close  to  the  intelligent  worship  of  God. 

The  springs  that  move  every  living  thing 
are  wound  up  by  the  sun.  Protoplasm,  the 
only  living  thing  on  earth,  has  movements. 
These  movements  exert  force.  This  force 
comes  from  the  sun.  All  processes  of  life,  from 
the  blow  of  the  prize-fighter,  or  the  thrust  of 
the  lance  of  Sir  Galahad,  to  the  thought  that 
is  recorded  on  this  page,  or  the  blossoming  of 
a  lily,  are  the  result  of  cell-activities  in  plant 
or  animal,  and  these  cell-activities  all  are 
made  up  of  impulses  from  the  sun,  imparted 
to  the  earth  through  its  rays. 

The  higher  types  of  animals  are  warmer 
than  their  surroundings.  Their  heat  is  ob- 
tained from  inner  fires  kept  burning  by  sup- 
plies of  fuel  in  food.  An  Eskimo  uses  whale 
oil  or  seal  or  walrus  or  fish  oil  for  fuel  in 
his  body — he  drinks  it  and  eats  it.  He  also 
burns  it  for  outward  heat.  We  do  the  same 
things — we  eat  oils  in  nuts,  fat  meats  and  salad 
oils,  and  we  burn  it  in  lamps,  stoves  and  fur- 

64 


FORCE 

naces.  Oils  are  merely  stored  energy  from  the 
sun — solar  heat  has  given  atoms  a  certain 
twist,  and  when  this  twist  is  freed  the  resulting 
kick  shows  itself  in  heat.  So  of  starches, 
sugars  and  those  foods  like  lean  meats  which 
we  call  proteins.  The  sun  warms  us  directly; 
and  indirectly  he  piles  his  force  up  into  the 
atoms  of  foods  and  fuels,  so  that  we  can  utilize 
the  power  he  poured  upon  the  earth  eons  ago. 

We  ourselves  are  alive  only  because  the 
heat-units  which  our  beings  make  over  into 
life-force  have  been  stored  in  the  decks  of  our 
good  ship  Earth  and  embodied  in  us.  We  are 
sun-created.  We  may  say  we  are  composed  of 
matter  and  force.  The  matter  is  of  the  earth, 
the  force  is  of  the  sun. 

There  are  black,  dead,  cold  planets  in  the 
voids  of  space  among  the  bright  stars  of  heaven 
— thousands  of  them — perhaps  millions.  They 
do  not  shine.  When  one  of  them  comes  be- 
tween us  and  a  star,  the  light  of  the  star  goes 
out.  Some  of  them  are  twinned  with  a  shin- 
ing star,  the  dead  twin  and  the  live  one  revolv- 
ing as  though  connected  like  dumb-bells  by  an 

65 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

invisible  rod.  Some  such  stars  are  variable  or 
intermittent,  the  bright  one  dimming  or  dis- 
appearing as  the  dark  one  comes  between  us 
and  its  shining  twin. 

These  dead  suns  and  dead  worlds  have  lost 
a  great  deal  of  their  force  or  energy.  Perhaps 
some  of  them  still  have  as  much  as  have  we— 
for  our  good  air-ship  Earth  does  not  shine 
as  a  sun,  but  only  glows  moon-like.  These 
worlds,  though  dark,  may  be  habitable.  We 
do  not  know.  But  we  can  not  see  how  any 
world  can  support  life,  which  does  not  receive 
from  some  sun,  which  is  itself  too  hot  with 
force  to  be  habitable,  a  supply  which  the 
magic  slime,  protoplasm,  may  work  up  into 
living  beings. 

The  force  we  get  hourly  from  the  sun,  we 
may  use  as  a  family  uses  such  an  income  as  a 
life  annuity.  All  we  can  get  out  of  it  belongs 
to  us,  and  when  we  die,  as  far  as  we  are  con- 
cerned it  stops.  If  we  don't  get  all  we  can  out 
of  it,  we  are  foolish.  We  are  passengers  on  the 
ship — and  if  we  do  not  use  the  sunshine,  the 
wind  and  the  waters  that  flow  and  surge  in 

66 


FORCE 

tides  of  force  all  about  us,  we  have  ourselves 
and  our  ignorance  and  inefficiency  to  blame. 

But  in  the  decking  of  the  ship — in  that  thin 
crust  of  rock  planking  that  we  stand  upon,  and 
which  separates  us  from  the  molten  core 
within,  there  are  bunkers  in  which  are  stored 
force  which  came  to  the  good  ship  Earth  while 
the  forces  of  the  cosmos  were  preparing  it  for 
our  voyage.  In  these  bunkers  are  the  bodies, 
brains  and  blood  of  the  coming  race.  These 
are  like  deposits  in  bank,  which,  when  drawn 
out,  are  not  replenished  by  new  deposits.  God 
opened  the  account  and  handed  us  the  Book. 

"Increase,  multiply  and  replenish  the 
earth,"  said  He.  "I  will  send  my  rays  upon 
you  as  needed.  And  in  future  ages  after 
knowledge  shall  have  been  increased,  you  shall 
discover  the  oil,  the  coal,  the  gas  and  the 
power  that  comes  from  falling  water.  Use  the 
income  of  the  planet  freely,  and  make  the 
most  of  it.  But  the  deposits  which  are  in  the 
bunkers  of  the  ship  I  have  given,  exhaust  at 
your  peril.  For  the  bunkers  once  emptied, 
will  never  be  refilled!" 

67 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

So,  while  we  were  savages  weak  in  knowl- 
edge and  knew  not  of  the  smallness  or  the 
largeness  of  our  Zeppelin  Earth  we  were  weak 
also  in  power  to  take  from  the  deposits  in  the 
bunkers.  We  dug  a  little  gold,  a  little  lead,  a 
little  zinc  and  some  copper,  but  no  coal,  and 
we  knew  nothing  of  the  oils  and  gases  be- 
neath us. 

As  for  the  forests,  we  had  only  weak  ways 
of  cutting  them  down,  or  of  sawing  the  logs, 
or  of  carrying  them  when  cut.  Only  a  small 
part  of  the  deck-dust  soil  was  tilled.  Suddenly 
— in  less  than  a  century — science  smiled  on 
us,  and  we  found  ourselves  blessed — or  cursed 
— with  knowledge  and  the  power  to  take  out 
the  deposits.  We  have  found  out  how  to  draw 
checks  on  the  bank  God  established  for  us,  and 
which  the  sun  filled  in  all  those  ages,  but  is 
now  filling  no  more. 

Shall  we  use  the  power  unrestrained  by  the 
knowledge  which  comes  with  it? 

It  is  the  old  story  of  the  freedom  of  the  will 
— the  ethical  riddle  of  the  sphinx.  The  young 
world  has  come  of  age — and  we  present  pas- 

68 


FORCE 

sengers  are  the  world.  Are  we  drawing  checks 
recklessly — wasting  the  deposits  God  gave  to 
us  and  our  progeny — or,  are  we  conserving 
them?  Let  us  see! 

How  many  readers  ever  heard  of  a  cement 
boat?  I  don't  mean  a  boat  loaded  with  ce- 
ment, but  one  made  of  it.  Such  craft  are 
in  existence  and  successfully  used  on  some 
of  the  waterways  of  Europe.  They  are  easily 
mended  if  stove,  and  can  be  made  in  compart- 
ments so  as  to  be  unsinkable. 

Once  there  was  made  a  huge  cement  craft 
in  the  form  of  a  raft — only  it  was  many  miles 
long.  It  was  reinforced  to  some  extent,  but 
was  really  not  subjected  to  much  strain,  on 
account  of  being  so  much  longer  than  any 
wave,  and  every  square  yard  of  it  being  up- 
held by  the  water,  just  the  same  as  every  other 
square  yard.  The  strain  was  no  greater  than 
that  upon  an  island.  A  rim  was  made  about 
the  edge,  and  the  decks  filled  in  with  good 
rich  earth  to  the  depth  of  several  feet.  Great 
caves  were  made  running  through  the  cement 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

island,  which  were  at  the  same  time  air-tight 
compartments,  and  roomy  cabins  for  all  sorts 
of  purposes — mostly  living-rooms.  The  earth 
was  planted  in  various  trees  and  crops^  and  in 
a  warm  climate — which  was  the  sort  for 
which  it  was  intended — the  artificial  island 
could  produce  all  the  food  the  thousand  men 
and  women  on  board  needed.  The  raft  was 
made  with  a  lagoon  in  the  center,  like  a  coral 
atoll,  and  there  was  a  braced  passage  for  the 
entrance  of  ships. 

It  was  built  for  a  floating  breakwater  and 
dry  dock  for  a  Pacific  location,  where  the  na- 
tion building  it  had  no  harbor  and  no  right  to 
anchor  permanently  inside  the  three-mile 
limit.  It  was  really  a  floating  harbor  and 
'colony. 

Running  through  the  cement  structure  were 
certain  great  chambers,  which  were  filled, 
some  with  coal  and  some  with  oil  and  some 
with  compressed  gas,  for  fuel,  light  and 
power  purposes.  The  coal  was  dumped  into 
these  cavities,  covered  with  gunny  sacks  and 
the  cement  poured  over  the  top  to  harden,  so 

70 


FORCE 

there  was  no  waste  room — the  cavities  were 
filled  chock-full. 

This  great  artificial  floating  island  was  lost 
on  its  way  around  Cape  Horn,  by  a  storm 
which  wrecked  most  of  the  steamers  that 
were  towing  it  and  blew  the  rest  away.  With 
all  its  people — a  thousand  men  and  women — it 
drifted  into  the  Sargasso  Sea,  where  the  cur- 
rents run  about  the  Atlantic  in  an  immense 
circle,  making  a  great  slow  whirlpool,  out  of 
which  nothing  ever  drifts.  It  is  full  of  sea- 
weed and  wreckage — all  slowly  drifting  round 
and  round  and  inward  toward  the  center — and 
has  strange  fishes  and  birds  all  of  its  own.  The 
thousand  people  were  lost — for  the  Sargasso 
Sea  is  out  of  the  track  of  the  ships  that  cross 
the  Atlantic. 

There  was  artificial  land  sufficient  to  make 
subsistence  easy  enough,  by  a  resort  to  inten- 
sive gardening.  The  trees  soon  grew  so  as  to 
make  the  place  beautiful.  In  fine  weather 
everybody  slept  in  the  gardens  on  deck.  The 
living-rooms  below  were  well  lighted  with 
gas,  and  were  really  pleasant  when  the 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

weather  was  rough  outside.  It  was  not  so  bad 
a  place,  after  all.  Here  the  people  lived  and 
married  and  had  children  and  died  and  were 
buried  in  the  green  depths  of  the  sea. 

One  day,  it  was  discovered  that  the  coal  in 
the  bunkers  was  being  wickedly  wasted. 
Three-fourths  of  it  were  being  thrown  away 
— just  because  it  was  inconvenient  to  handle. 
What  was  used  was  burned  in  such  a  manner 
that  not  half  of  it  did  anybody  any  good ;  the 
portion  wasted  in  smoke  made  life  on  board 
disagreeable  to  all,  and  worse  still,  the  portion 
used  for  making  electric  light  was  more  than 
ninety-nine  per  cent,  lost  in  converting  its  en- 
ergy into  current!  This  was  one  of  the  first 
real  troubles  they  had;  for  they  did  not  know 
what  would  become  of  them  when  the  coal 
was  gone. 

A  meeting  was  called.  The  people  on  board 
asserted  that  they  were  all  equally  interested 
in  those  supplies  on  which  the  well-being  of 
all  depended.  But  those  who  were  handling 
the  coal  business  refused  to  admit  that  the 
others  had  any  rights  in  the  case.  For  on  di- 

72 


FORCE 

viding  up  the  island  when  they  were  cast 
away,  the  decks,  on  which  opened  the  hatches 
leading  to  the  coal  bunkers,  were  assigned  to 
these  coal  people — and  therefore  the  coal  in 
the  bunkers  had  passed  into  private  possession, 
and  become  private  property.  The  passengers, 
however,  laughed  at  this  theory  of  private 
property  when  it  was  put  forth  by  the  coal 
"owners",  and  took  possession  of  the  coal  as 
a  part  of  the  common  property  of  all,  and  be- 
gan a  course  of  economy  in  taking  out  and 
using  it  by  which  they  so  conserved  the  coal 
that  when  the  island  was  finally  rediscovered 
and  the  people  taken  off,  there  was  still  a 
great  deal  of  coal  in  the  bunkers,  though  sev- 
eral years  had  elapsed. 

The  above  is  an  allegory,  or  as  Jesus  called 
such  stories,  a  parable.  It  is  the  shortest  way 
I  know  to  tell  you  the  coal  problem  which 
confronts  us  passengers  on  the  good  ship 
Earth. 

There  is  only  just  so  much  coal  in  the  earth. 
Does  it  belong  to  all  of  us,  or  only  to  those 
who  have  deeds  to  the  land  above  it?  I  don't 

73 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

mean  in  law — I  know  what  the  courts  would 
say — but  in  real  truth  and  in  real  fact,  by  that 
higher  law  which  forbids  the  waste  of  those 
things  on  which  the  race  must  base  its  future 
life?  Careful  estimates  have  been  made  lead- 
ing to  the  conclusion  that  if  we  keep  up  the 
increase  in  the  consumption  of  coal  at  our 
present  rate,  the  supply  will  give  out  in  one 
hundred  and  fifty  years.  I  believe  there  will 
be  much  of  coal  long  after  that;  but  this  is  cer- 
tainly true — sometime  it  must  be  exhausted  if 
we  keep  on  mining  it.  That's  as  certain  as 
death.  And  we  are  as  wicked  and  cruel  in  our 
waste  if  we  bring  this  awful  catastrophe  pre- 
maturely on  the  world  ten  thousand  years  from 
now,  as  in  ten  years.  Can  one  escape  that  con- 
clusion? 

The  people  who  are  handling  the  coal  busi- 
ness for  us  on  the  good  ship  Earth  are  wast- 
ing the  coal.  From  one-half  to  three-quar- 
ters of  the  anthracite  and  half  the  soft  coal  are 
wasted  in  mining.  It  costs  less  to  take  out  only 
that  which  comes  easiest,  so  a  great  deal  is 
left  to  be  hidden  forever  when  the  props  come 

74 


FORCE 

out  and  the  roof  caves  in.  Thus,  the  com- 
panies make  more  money,  and  we  get  cheaper 
coal  than  if  it  were  properly  mined. 

There  are  nearly  a  hundred  thousand  bee- 
hive coke  ovens  in  the  United  States  which 
waste  fifty  million  dollars'  worth  of  the  good- 
ness of  the  coal  annually — all  the  gas,  all  the 
tar,  all  the  heat  developed  in  the  coking 
process  and  all  the  fertilizer  are  wasted — fer- 
tilizer our  hungry  soils  need  so  sorely.  Ovens 
such  as  are  used  in  really  civilized  nations 
would  save  these — and  make  their  owners 
money.  One-twelfth  of  all  our  coal  goes  up 
in  black  smoke — or  $40,000,000  a  year.  Me- 
chanical stokers  would  save  almost  all  of  this. 
Van  Hise  says  that  in  one  fair-sized  plant 
the  smoke-preventing  machines  save  more 
than  a  third  of  the  coal.  It  is  certain  that  this 
smoke  curse  could  be  prevented. 

Only  one  per  cent,  of  the  coal's  energy  is 
realized  in  light  when  burned  to  make  elec- 
tricity! We  should  make  our  lights  of  other 
things — water-power,  for  instance. 

In  using  coal  for  power,  much  more  could 

75 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

be  made  if  the  fuel  elements  were  converted 
into  gas  and  used  in  gas  engines  instead  of 
steam  engines.  It  is  perfectly  well  settled  that 
coal  converted  into  producer  gas  gives  more 
than  two  and  a  half  times  the  power  that  it 
does  when  used  to  make  steam.  Think  of 
saving  two-thirds  of  the  coal  burned  in  sta- 
tionary steam  engines!  But  it  takes  better 
men,  more  intelligent  men,  to  run  such  en- 
gines. So  what  we  need  is  more  intelligence 
in  the  mine  owners,  more  intelligence  in  en- 
gineers, more  intelligence  and  better  morals 
all  along  the  line.  We  could  get  along  with 
less  than  half  the  coal  we  burn,  if  we  tried 
hard.  And  there  is  a  way  by  which  we  might 
do  a  great  deal  better  than  that 

The  big  question  is,  of  course,  to  whom  the 
supplies  belong  which  God  has  placed  in  the 
hold  of  this  good  ship  Earth.  Suppose  they 
were  threatened  by  an  accidental  conflagra- 
tion, how  the  coal  barons  would  call  on  every 
good  citizen  to  fight  for  the  "heritage  of  the 
race  I"  Why  isn't  it  our  heritage  when  a 
money-making  conflagration  is  ravaging  it? 


CHAPTER  VII 

SOME  IMPENDING  MIGRATIONS 

IN  these  sketches  of  world  problems,  we 
have  considered  how  the  passengers  on  our 
terrestrial  Zeppelin  have  been  assigned  their 
present  quarters,  and  why  they  are  crowded 
so  largely  into  Europe,  Southern  and  Eastern 
Asia,  and  Eastern  North  America.  The  basic 
reason  lies  in  the  supply  of  potash,  nitrates 
and  phosphorus  in  the  soil,  on  the  planking 
of  the  decks.  For  where  these  things  occur 
Mother  Earth  has  that  blessed  breaking-out 
of  green  rash  on  her  skin,  called  vegetation — 
and  on  that  animal  life  is  based.  But  there 
are  many  regions  in  which  these  elements  are 
plentifully  found,  but  where  the  climate  for- 
bids successful  community  life,  or,  at  any  rate, 
forbids  a  dense  population.  It  is  too  hot — as 
in  the  tropics;  or  too  hot  and  wet — as  in  the 
forests  of  Central  Africa  or  Central  South 

77 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

America;  or  too  hot  and  dry,  as  in  the  Sahara; 
or  too  dry  with  a  good  temperature,  as  in 
much  of  North  America;  or  too  cold,  as  in  a 
great  deal  of  Canada,  Labrador,  Siberia,  and 
portions  of  Russia  and  Patagonia.  Greenland, 
Iceland  and  the  unknown  antarctic  continent 
are  almost  always  frozen. 

With  the  human  race  so  growing  in  num- 
bers, it  seems  certain  that  new  lands  will  have 
to  be  occupied  peaceably;  or  the  old  fierce 
game  of  war  and  conquest  and  extirpation 
must  be  resumed. 

The  passengers  used  to  kill  one  another  off 
more  than  now.  Away  off  in  the  unknown 
wilds  of  Eastern  Asia,  some  great  brute  of  a 
murderer  like  Genghis  Khan  would  arise  and 
assail  his  fellow  men  using  other  fellow  men 
as  a  weapon,  and  the  tribes  and  nations 
would  begin  to  be  driven  against  one  another 
like  a  row  of  falling  bricks.  The  huge  con- 
tinent would  shake  with  war — and  finally,  the 
wave  would  surge  westward  until  our  an- 
cestors in  Europe  would  be  involved.  Under 
the  beating  of  such  waves,  Greece  was  sub- 

78 


SOME  IMPENDING  MIGRATIONS 

merged,  and  the  Roman  Empire  went  down  in 
ruins.  The  passengers  were  seeking  new  quar- 
ters, that's  all.  But  now,  we  seem  to  have 
ceased  for  a  while  to  do  this — in  their  way  at 
least.  And  with  the  falling  off  in  murder 
there  is  an  increase  in  people. 

To  help  on  this  increase,  science  is  master- 
ing disease.  So  in  spite  of  famine  and,  pov- 
erty, men  are  so  multiplying  that  new  quarters 
will  one  day  be  absolutely  necessary.  The  pas- 
sengers are  in  many  places  getting  too  nu- 
merous. In  peaceful  China  and  prolific  India, 
and  probably  -in  some  other  countries,  the 
limits  of  subsistence  are  already  being  pressed 
upon  by  sheer  force  of  numbers.  Where  is 
the  new  land  for  the  new  billions? 

There  are  two  directions  in  which  the  land- 
swarmings  of  the  future  may  move.  They  are 
north  and  south.  In  both  directions  the  cli- 
matic conditions  are  so  rigorous  as  to  have 
kept  men  from  multiplying  under  them  to 
any  great  extent — for  the  hot  regions  of  the 
air-ship  amidships,  and  the  cold  regions  at 
stem  and  stern  are  both  sparsely  supplied  with 

79 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

angers.  Where,  as  in  some  densely-peo- 
pled tropical  regions  this  is  not  true,  the  com- 
munity life  is  not  successful. 

Climate!  This  is  the  one  thing  man  has 
never  yet  been  able  to  control.  Almost  every 
other  phase  of  his  environments,  he  can  mod- 
ify. He  can  cause  new  and  more  useful  ani- 
mals and  plants  to  supplant  the  ones  Nature 
gave  the  earth.  He  can  annihilate  distance. 
He  can  chain  the  spirits  of  coal.  He  can 
harness  the  winds  and  the  rivers.  But  he  has 
never  yet  changed  a  climate.  There  be  those 
who  think  that  arid  climates  grow  moister 
with  the  cultivation  of  the  lands,  but  such 
minds  are  duped.  There  does  not  fall  on  the 
average  a  drop  more  of  moisture  on  any  acre 
of  our  great  arid  and  semiarid  plains  than  fell 
there  on  the  average  before  a  plow  was  put 
into  them.  Climate  has  always  been  the  mas- 
ter of  man. 

But  will  this  always  be  so?  No,  without 
intending  to  do  so,  man  is  already  affecting 
the  climate  of  the  whole  earth.  'He  is  doing 
this  by  a  thing  never  done  before  in  the  his- 

80 


SOME  IMPENDING  MIGRATIONS 

tory  of  the  globe — the  burning  of  coal.  When- 
ever a  ton  of  coal  is  burned,  there  passes  off 
into  the  air  a  great  many  vapors.  Among  them 
is  carbonic  acid,  or  carbon  dioxide.  This  is 
the  gas  that  gathers  in  the  well  and  kills  the 
man  who  unwarily  goes  down  to  clean  it.  It 
passes  into  the  air  as  a  product  of  combustion 
everywhere  that  combustion  takes  place,  and 
always  has.  It  is  breathed  in  by  the  leaves  of 
plants.  It  is  fatal  to  animal  life  if  breathed 
in  too  strong  a  mixture,  but  in  the  amount 
usually  found  in  the  air,  unless  in  an  unven- 
tilated  room,  or  well,  or  mine,  it  is  not  hurt- 
ful; in  fact  it  is  probably  useful.  The  forest 
fires,  the  prairie  fires,  the  rotting  of  vegeta- 
tion, the  transpiration  of  plants — all  these 
have  always  kept  in  the  air  a  certain  amount 
of  carbonic  acid  gas. 

And  now  man  is  adding  to  the  amount  by 
burning  coal  as  nothing  was  ever  burned  on 
earth  before  since  the  fires  of  its  glowing  core 
were  quenched  by  its  crust.  Up  to  1845,  man 
had  burned  27,700,000  tons  in  all  history.  In 
the  one  year  of  1911  we  burned  not  less  than 

81 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

500,000,000  tons!  This  is  a  terrific  thing  to 
contemplate — the  passengers  engaged  in  such 
a  tremendous  robbery  of  the  coal  bunkers — 
but  we  are  now  concerned  only  with  carbonic 
acid  gas,  and  its  effects  on  the  climate. 

If  we  keep  up  the  increase  to  even  half  the 
extent  which  seems  certain,  we  shall  pour  into 
the  air  enough  carbon  dioxide  to  double  the 
amount  of  it  in  the  atmosphere  in  eight  hun- 
dred years.  The  probabilities  are  that  the 
amount  will  be  tripled  in  less  than  a  thousand 
years — and  your  children  and  mine  will  be 
here  then! 

One  of  the  greatest  scientists  in  the  world 
is  Arrhenius,  of  Sweden.  He  is  a  chemist  and 
physicist,  and  has  studied  this  matter.  He 
shows  that  this  proportion  of  carbon  dioxide 
in  the  air  will  make  the  climate  warmer,  by 
acting  like  the  glass  roof  of  a  greenhouse. 
With  the  carbon  dioxide  increased  from  two 
and  one-half  to  three  times,  the  temperature 
of  the  whole  world  will  be  raised  eight  to  nine 
degrees  centigrade — and  Greenland  will  have 
a  good  climate  for  farming.  All  the  good  soil 

82 


SOME  IMPENDING  MIGRATIONS 

of  Canada  will  be  in  as  temperate  a  climate 
as  that  now  enjoyed  by  Missouri. 

Corn  will  be  grown  in  the  Peace  River  Val- 
ley. Oranges  will  be  an  orchard  fruit  in  Ar- 
kansas and  Virginia.  The  suburban  residents 
of  Chicago  may  literally  sit  under  their  own 
fig  trees  and  scuppernong  grape  arbors.  Cot- 
ton will  be  a  staple  crop  in  Iowa.  Bananas 
will  fringe  the  shores  of  the  Gulf.  Siberia 
will  become  the  greatest  farming  country  in 
the  world.  The  great  antarctic  continent — 
one  of  the  greatest  on  earth  in  extent — will  be 
the  Western  Canada,  the  Scandinavia,  the 
Siberia  of  that  day,  and  will  have  millions  of 
people.  The  interior  of  Alaska  will  be  as 
warm  as  Maine  now  is.  And  the  heat  of  all 
the  tropics  will  be  augmented  for  thousands 
of  years. 

The  increased  heat  will  cause  more  evapora- 
tion of  water  vapor  from  the  oceans — and  as 
what  goes  up  must  come  down,  this  will  cause 
moister  climates  almost  everywhere,  and  our 
dry-farming  regions  will  become  as  wet  as 
Ohio. 

83 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

And  then,  the  passengers  on  this  good  ship 
Earth  will  have  vast  fields  of  good  land  upon 
which  to  multiply — as  it  seems  to  be  their  fate 
to  do.  All  this  will  take  place  in  a  time 
shorter  than  the  history  of  England  since  the 
Norman  Conquest — in  twice  the  time  which 
has  elapsed  since  the  governor's  palace  was 
built  in  Santa  Fe,  New  Mexico — our  youngest 
state! 

This  voyage  on  the  good  ship  Earth  differs 
from  other  voyages,  in  this,  that  nobody  gets 
off  the  ship — death  is  only  a  name  for  be- 
ing reabsorbed  into  her  decks;  and  birth  is 
only  an  expression  of  the  idea  that  portions 
of  the  decks  have  taken  on  the  form  of  a  baby, 
which  will  take  into  itself  more  and  more  of 
the  ship,  until  it  grows  up.  And  with  birth 
embodied  in  the  earth  of  the  body,  and  with 
death  disembodied  from  it,  is  the  mystery  of 
the  soul. 

And  inasmuch  as  nobody  gets  off,  the  num- 
ber that  are  born  among  us  becomes  an  im- 
portant matter — we  shall  come  to  a  fuller  con- 

84 


SOME  IMPENDING  MIGRATIONS 

tact  with  that  problem  later.  Just  now  what 
concerns  us  is  the  fact  that  in  spots  the  pas- 
sengers are  getting  too  thick.  New  quarters 
must  be  found  for  the  increase. 

Millions  may  be  stowed  in  the  places  now 
recognized  as  desirable  and  still  unoccupied 
or  only  half  occupied.  Then  we  are  going 
to  spread  northward  in  the  northern  hemis- 
phere into  Siberia,  Canada  and  other  lands 
now  sparsely  occupied  by  reason  of  the  cold 
—because  the  climate  of  the  whole  world  will 
grow  warmer  and  warmer  as  the  air  is  filled 
with  carbonic  acid  gas  from  the  consumption 
of  coal — and  we  shall  even  be  able  to  re- 
people  Greenland  and  spread  toward  the 
south  pole  into  the  antarctic  continent.  All 
this  within  a  thousand  years,  as  there  is  reason 
to  believe. 

But  are  we  to  leave  the  tropics  as  unin- 
habited or  sparsely  peopled  jungles  and  llanos 
and  pampas  and  silvas?  We  have  never  been 
able  to  develop  successful  collective  life  in  the 
torrid  zone.  Why?  Is  the  land  there  lacking 
in  the  elements  of  plant  food  on  which  alone 

85 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

human  life  is  based?  Far  from  it.  The  richest 
lands  in  the  world,  judged  by  their  products, 
are  in  the  tropics  of  Southern  Asia,  Central 
Africa,  Central  South  America,  and  such 
huge  islands  as  Borneo,  Papua  and  the  Phil- 
ippines. They  are  well  watered.  They  bring 
forth  amazingly.  Where  scientifically  culti- 
vated, as  in  Hawaii,  they  prove  themselves 
capable  of  producing  food  and  shelter  for 
dense  populations. 

Why,  then,  do  not  all  the  crowded  passen- 
gers in  the  ship  go  to  the  tropics,  where  these 
rich  lands  are,  by  the  millions  of  acres,  occu- 
pied only  by  the  wild  beasts,  birds  and  the 
riotous  vegetation? 

There  are  many  reasons — reasons  of  state, 
reasons  of  race  prejudice,  reasons  of  difficulty 
on  the  part  of  the  migration  of  poor  people. 
And  there  are  inherent  reasons. 

The  very  richness  of  the  tropics  makes  them 
hard  to  reclaim.  In  the  canal  zone,  a  road 
built  to  a  farm  is  grown  up  and  impassable 
in  a  few  weeks.  The  trees  and  vines  and  huge 
weeds  are  foes  to  man.  They  overwhelm  him. 

86 


SOME  IMPENDING  MIGRATIONS 

They  daunt  him.  They  make  it  almost  impos- 
sible to  him  to  clear  the  land,  and  almost  as 
impossible  to  keep  it  cleared. 

Then  there  is  the  question  of  health.  Until 
recently  white  men  have  found  it  impossible 
to  live  a  full  strong  life  in  the  tropics,  or  to 
perpetuate  their  race  there.  The  British  in 
India  last  but  two  or  three  generations.  Our 
people  in  the  Philippines  may  be  expected 
to  perish  in  the  same  way,  unless — unless  we 
Gorgasize  and  Goethalsize  the  Philippines. 
I  mean,  unless  we  do  them  as  we  have  done  in 
the  canal  zone. 

In  making  the  Panama  Canal,  we  seem  to 
have  solved  the  problem  of  white  life  in  the 
tropics.  Doctor  Gorgas  and  his  health  depart- 
ment, under  the  rule  of  Colonel  Goethals,  have 
made  the  most  pestilential  spot  on  earth,  per- 
haps, a  region  where  white  men  can  work, 
and  work  hard,  and  where  white  family  life 
seems  perfectly  possible  as  a  permanent  thing. 

This  is  a  greater  achievement  than  the 
building  of  the  canal  itself! 

Disease  comes  in  the  tropics,  as  elsewhere, 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

mostly  in  the  form  of  evil  bacteria  in  the 
blood,  and  animal  parasites  in  the  body. 
These  produce  diseases.  The  proverbial  in- 
dolence of  the  nations  of  the  tropics  is  largely 
the  result  of  disease — like  hook-worm.  These 
germs  and  parasites  affect  both  the  men  and 
their  live  stock.  The  tsetse  fly  fights  back 
farming  by  killing  the  domestic  animals  in 
South  Africa.  The  sleeping  sickness  kills  off 
the  people.  Cholera  ravages  the  tropics,  and 
bubonic  plague  and  yellow  fever  and  hook- 
worm and  many  other  plagues.  But  these  dis- 
eases are  one  by  one  being  conquered.  Yel- 
low fever  and  malaria  are  mere  questions  of 
mosquitoes,  and  the  Panama  and  Cuban  ex- 
periences prove  that  they  can  be  coped  with. 
A  simple  remedy  and  very  effective  prevent- 
ives are  known  for  hook-worm.  New  anti- 
toxins and  serums  are  found  every  year.  We 
can  now  see  the  end  of  the  terrors  of  the 
tropics  for  the  white  race. 

The  other  great  scourge  of  the  tropics  is 
commercialism,  and  its  accompanying  slavery 
and  peonage.  The  horrid  debauch  of  greed 


SOME  IMPENDING  MIGRATIONS 

in  the  Congo  State  under  the  accursed  Leopold 
was  commercialism  hunting  ivory  and  rubber. 
Yucatan  and  henequen,  Bluefields  and 
bananas,  Hawaii  and  Java  and  sugar — these 
sinister  couples  might  be  added  to  indefinitely. 
Spanish  America  and  her  princely  haciendas 
are  other  names  for  land  monopoly  and 
slavery.  The  destruction  of  men  in  the  tropics 
by  disease  germs  and  parasites  is  not  so  awful 
as  that  by  human  parasites ! 

The  slogan  for  the  human  race  seeking  to 
move  into  these  great  vacant  spaces  on  the 
decks  of  the  good  ship  Earth,  therefore,  is 
science,  democracy  and  cooperative  industry. 
Science  will  ward  off  disease  and  point  the 
way  to  successful  production.  Democracy  will 
eliminate  privilege  and  give  to  each  man  the 
same  rights  to  use  of  the  decks  of  the  good 
ship  Earth  as  any  other  man.  And  cooperat- 
ive industry — cooperative  farming,  cooperat- 
ive manufacturing  replacing  the  wage  system 
» — will  furnish  the  capital,  the  engineering 
skill,  the  sanitation  and  the  willingness  to 
wait,  necessary  to  the  reclamation  of  those 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

wide  and  overgrown  regions  which  present 
problems  too  difficult  for  the  unaided  man. 

In  that  day,  the  valleys  of  the  Congo,  the 
Niger,  the  Upper  Nile,  and  the  Zambeze— 
the  whole  interior  plateau  of  Africa — will 
hold  more  happy  people  than  Europe  ever 
possessed,  and  the  civilization  will  outshine 
that  of  Carthage  or  ancient  Egypt,  or  of  the 
Moors,  or  of  present-day  Europe  or  America. 

And  the  Amazon,  the  Orinoco  and  the  La 
Plata  will  carry  commerce  between  the 
densest  populations  in  the  world.  There  are 
areas  greater  than  half  a  dozen  Texases  along 
those  rivers  where  not  the  highest  wages  will 
now  tempt  even  the  natives  to  go  for  rubber, 
the  conditions  are  so  lethal.  All  that  will  be 
cured.  Science,  democracy  and  cooperative 
industry  will  make  of  Brazil  and  her  neigh- 
bor states  the  beautiful  and  prolific  home  of 
more  people  than  now  exist  on  earth.  The 
vacant  spaces  there  are  greater  than  the  whole 
of  the  United  States  and  naturally  richer  than 
the  Mississippi  Valley. 

In  those  days,  the  Caribbean  and  the  Gulf 
90 


SOME  IMPENDING  MIGRATIONS 

of  Mexico  will  carry  the  busiest  commerce  in 
the  world,  perhaps,  for  across  them  will  lie 
ferries  from  the  South  American  and  Central 
American  ports  to  the  West  Indies,  and  our 
southern  states.  The  Mississippi  Valley  and 
the  valley  of  the  Amazon  will  fill  those  seas 
with  shipping,  and  drop  wealth  and  plenty  on 
all  shores. 

To  the  accomplishment  of  this  future  the 
passengers  are  now  almost  ready  to  address 
their  efforts.  We  have  the  science — Goethals 
and  Gorgas  have  shown  us  that.  To-morrow 
will  bring  the  democracy  and  the  cooperative 
commonwealth,  with  the  right  to  the  use  of 
the  good  ship  Earth  assured  to  every  pas- 
senger— no  matter  how  humble. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

THE  IRON  AGE— AND  THEN? 

NOW  that  we  think  of  it,  every  one  of  us 
must  see  that  it's  our  business  if  the  sup- 
plies for  the  maintenance  of  the  passengers  on 
the  good  ship  Earth  are  in  danger  of  running 
out.  It's  everybody's  business,  no  matter  who 
has  the  paper  title  to  the  supplies.  For  every- 
body is  a  passenger,  and  the  descendants  of 
everybody  must  be  passengers. 

The  supply  of  coal  is  absolutely  essential 
to  civilization.  Mankind  in  their  present 
numbers  can  not  be  supported  without  its  heat, 
and  the  work  it  does.  The  coal  will  last  much 
longer  than  it  would  otherwise  do,  because  in 
burning  it  we  fill  the  air  with  carbon  dioxide 
which  in  a  few  hundred  years  will  cover  all 
countries  like  the  glass  of  a  greenhouse,  and 
make  the  climate  of  the  ship  warmer  than  now. 
So  we  shall  not  need  to  burn  so  much  coal 
per  capita. 

92 


THE  IRON  AGE— AND  THEN? 

But  there  is  another  necessary  of  life  in  the 
bunkers  of  the  ship  which  must  be  used  with 
coal  if  civilization  is  to  be  maintained.  It 
is  iron.  As  steel,  and  under  its  own  title,  this 
metal  gives  name  to  our  epoch — the  Iron  Age 
or  the  Age  of  Steel.  Think  of  a  world  with- 
out iron — and  except  in  a  small  way  the  world 
was  practically  without  it,  just  a  few  genera- 
tions back.  No  factories.  No  engines.  No 
motor-cars.  No  watches.  No  effective  tools. 
No  nails.  No  bolts.  No  railways.  No  tele- 
graph. No  telephone.  No  sky-scrapers.  No 
truss  bridges.  No  typewriters.  No  steel  pens. 
No  printing  presses.  No  reapers.  No  thresh- 
ers. No  cotton  gins.  No  machine-made  shoes 
or  factory  cloth,  or  machine-made  anything. 
No  guns.  No  battle-ships.  No  real  ships  of 
any  sort,  not  even  sailing  vessels.  No  stoves  or 
furnaces.  No  steam  heat.  No  chains.  No 
ropes — for  metal  machinery  is  used  in  mak- 
ing them.  No  cordage  or  thread  of  any  sort 
save  hand-twisted  strings.  No  needles.  No 
sewing-machines.  No  pianos.  No  saws,  and 
therefore  no  lumber.  No  houses — only  caves 

93 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

or  huts.  No  gasoline  or  kerosene — for  the  pe- 
troleum business  is  based  on  iron  pipes  and 
iron  machinery.  No  gas.  No  ice  in  summer. 
No  exhaustion  of  the  soil,  through  agriculture. 
No  waste  of  coal  by  mining.  No  coal.  No 
wastage  of  oil  or  natural  gas.  No  whale  oil, 
even.  No  fish-hooks,  save  bone  ones.  No 
denudation  of  forests  through  cutting,  by  rea- 
son of  lack  of  axes.  No  conservation  prob- 
lem. No  civilization.  Nobody  to  write  es- 
says like  this  about  the  good  ship  Earth. 
Nobody  able  to  see  the  questions.  This  is 
indeed  the  Age  of  Iron,  and  coal  is  the  agent 
by  which  alone  it  can  be  thawed  for  use, 

Of  necessity  I  speak  of  the  iron  in  the  bunk- 
ers of  our  Zeppelin  as  it  careers  through 
space,  as  "ours."  I  hope  in  doing  so  I  do  not 
offend  Judge  Gary  of  the  United  States  Steel 
Corporation.  Once  I  spoke  of  that  Colonel 
North  who  believed  himself  to  have  the  nitro- 
gen of  the  world  reduced  to  possession  in  the 
nitrate  beds  of  Chili  so  effectively  that  his  de- 
scendants would  have  the  power  to  starve  our 
descendants  if  they  chose.  Science  found  a 

94 


THE  IRON  AGE— AND  THEN? 

I 

way  out  of  the  North  clutches.  Who  shall 
show  us  a  way  out  of  the  clutches  of  Judge 
Gary  of  the  United  States  Steel  Corporation? 
For  he — or  rather  his  immortal  entity  the  cor- 
poration itself — is  the  Colonel  North  of  Iron. 

Fellow  passengers  on  a  wild  air-ship  named 
the  Earth!  Our  Zeppelin  can  not  stop  to  take 
on  supplies — therefore  consider  this: 

Most  of  our  iron  now  available  is  in  the 
Lake  Superior  bankers — the  supplies  for  the 
steel  and  iron  works  on  the  lakes  and  in  the 
Pittsburgh  district  come  from  there — Gary, 
South  Chicago,  Milwaukee,  Detroit,  Buffalo, 
Cleveland,  Conneaut,  Lorain  and  the  rest. 
These  stores,  amounting  to  1,500,000,000  tons, 
are  owned  mostly  by  Judge  Gary's  immortal 
entity — which  we  created  by  law.  In  the 
southern  iron  bins  God  has  stored  almost  twice 
as  much — Andrew  Carnegie  thinks  about 
2,500,000,000  tons — and  the  best  of  this  the 
entity  picked  up  one  stormy  day  in  1907  when 
Mr.  Roosevelt  let  Gary  have  the  Tennessee 
Coal  and  Iron  Company — to  prevent  a  panic! 
Altogether  we  have  in  the  United  States  about 

95 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

10,000,000,000  tons  of  iron,  which  is  worth 
taking  into  account.  That's  what  the  Laird 
of  Skibo  thinks — but  he  also  says  that  the  ore 
bodies  when  worked  out  usually  fall  short  of 
the  estimates. 

There  is  no  reason  to  think  we  shall  find 
any  great  supply  to  add  to  these — not  in  the 
United  States.  Canada  is  a  promising  place 
to  search,  and  in  the  unexplored  mountains  of 
the  other  continents  a  great  deal  may  be  found 
— but  to  depend  on  such  a  thing  is  like  throw- 
ing found  money  to  the  dogs  in  the  confident 
expectation  of  picking  up  treasure-trove  be- 
fore it's  gone.  Germany  and  Britain  and 
Sweden  have  the  only  other  supplies  compar- 
able to  ours — though  Cuba  and  Brazil  have 
immense  deposits — but  they  do  not  relieve  the 
anxieties  much,  of  a  passenger  who  cares  what 
becomes  of  the  folk  on  board. 

Now  without  any  increase  in  the  rate  of 
mining,  the  known  supply  in  the  Lake  Su- 
perior region  will  give  out  within  thirty 
years.  Judge  Gary's  entity  will  empty  those 
bunkers.  By  1938  half  the  workable  ore  in 

96 


THE  IRON  AGE— AND  THEN? 

this  country  will  be  gone — and  all  the  time 
Sweden,  Britain  and  Germany  will  be  eating 
up  their  supply,  and  then,  resorting  to  the 
poorer  ores,  the  work  will  go  on,  until  by  the 
year  2000  our  supply  will  be  gone. 

I  think  the  case  is  one  that  demands  atten- 
tion on  the  part  of  those  who  expect  to  leave 
descendants — or  who  care  about  the  descend- 
ants of  others — and  that  ought  to  take  in 
nearly  everybody. 

We  as  a  race  should  see  to  it  that  iron  is 
saved  by  all  possible  means.  For  this  reason, 
if  for  no  other,  we  should  provide  for  the 
carrying  of  freight  on  natural  or  artificial 
waterways,  so  as  to  prevent  the  loss  of  iron  by 
the  wearing  out  of  steel  rails  in  carrying  an 
unnecessary  amount  of  traffic.  It  is  the  cheap- 
est way  of  carrying  freight,  anyhow.  More 
waterways,  and  less  spending  of  iron  on  rail- 
ways. And  it  would  save  half  the  coal  bill  for 
transportation,  too — thus  easing  up  the  empty- 
ing of  the  coal  bunkers. 

We  should  use  concrete  for  all  erections  for 
which  it  is  adapted — for  there  is  cement  and 

97 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

stone  in  plenty  for  all  ages.  The  next  age 
should  be  the  Age  of  Concrete. 

We  should  stop  building  battle-ships. 

Think  of  robbing  the  bunkers  filled  by  the 
Master  who  built  and  launched  the  ship  with 
things  necessary  to  the  highest  good  of  the 
passengers,  and  of  making  the  goods  over  into 
murder-factories  like  war-ships!  And  the 
war-ship  industry  is  what  keeps  a  lot  of  steam- 
shovels  at  work  scooping  out  our  iron,  day 
after  day,  year  after  year.  Imagine  the  pas- 
sengers on  any  vessel  using  the  supplies  as 
weapons  with  which  to  kill  one  another. 

Then  we  should  see  to  it  that  all  iron  when 
worn  out  is  saved,  worked  up  into  new  forms 
and  used  instead  of  iron  newly-taken  from 
the  earth.  For  iron,  unlike  coal,  is  not  lim- 
ited to  one  occasion  of  use.  It  lasts.  Probably 
as  the  store  in  use  increases,  the  need  for  dig- 
ging it  out  of  the  bunkers  will  lessen.  Let  us 
hope  so.  But  those  steel  ships  sunk  in  war — 
they  are  lost  forever!  Let  us  stop  wasting  our 
iron  on  war-ships! 

For,  be  as  optimistic  as  we  will,  we  should 


THE  IRON  AGE— AND  THEN? 

remember  that  only  two  of  the  five  con- 
tinents are  at  all  well  supplied  with  railways, 
and  that  when  the  two-thirds  of  the  passengers 
who  do  not  mine  iron,  or  use  many  machines, 
really  wake  up,  we  may  face  an  iron  famine, 
which  will  endanger  civilization  itself. 


CHAPTER  IX 

OUR  WORLD-WIDE  METAL  OF  WORSHIP — GOLD 

THERE  are  other  metals  in  the  bunkers 
which  we  should  be  sorry  to  do  with- 
out. Copper  is  immensely  important — and 
when  we  come  to  the  work  of  using  all  our 
water-power  to  save  the  depletion  of  the  coal 
in  the  ground,  we  shall  need  to  use  a  great 
deal  more  of  copper.  Therefore,  it  would  be 
a  sensible  deprivation  to  all  of  us  if  the  sup- 
ply of  copper  were  to  be  exhausted.  So  with 
zinc,  which  is  needed  for  utensils,  for  the  pres- 
ervation of  iron  and  steel  by  galvanizing,  as 
an  alloy  of  copper  in  the  making  of  that  very 
useful  metal,  brass,  and  for  paint.  Lead  is 
the  basis  of  a  very  important  industry,  is  wide- 
ly consumed  as  paint,  and  is  almost  essential 
to  many  kinds  of  construction  which  we  should 
scarcely  know  how  to  dispense  with.  And 
even  the  new  metal,  aluminum,  and  manga- 
nese, vanadium,  mercury  and  many  more, 

100 


GOLD 

mostly  with  names  ending  in  "um,"  from  the 
precious  platinum  to  the  unfamiliar  molybde- 
num, are  all  useful,  and  yearly  becoming  more 
so  as  we  find  out  more  about  their  properties 
— all  are  important;  but  we  need  not  worry 
about  the  exhaustion  of  our  stores  of  these. 

We  need  not  worry — because  they  are  not 
so  essential  to  civilization  as  are  iron  and  coal ; 
nor  to  life,  as  is  the  soil.  We  need  not  worry 
for  the  additional  reason  that  the  same  moral 
uplift  that  carries  us  to  the  height  of  looking 
after  the  iron  and  coal  and  forests  and  soil, 
will  bring  us  to  the  point  of  looking  after 
these  subordinate  good  things  placed  in  the 
bunkers  of  the  good  ship  Earth  for  the  use  of 
all  the  passengers  alike. 

But  I  must  mention  two  metals  because  of 
their  wonderful  interest  to  the  world  for  the 
reason  that  they  have  been  taken  as  measures 
of  value  for  other  commodities.  Though  not 
extraordinarily  useful  in  themselves,  they  exert 
an  influence  upon  our  prosperity  which  would 
be  incomprehensible  to  a  person  brought  up 
outside  their  sway.  I  mean  silver  and  gold 

101 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

These  metals  are  useful — in  fact,  if  they 
were  plentiful,  they  would  take  the  place  of 
the  baser  metals  in  many  of  the  arts.  As  in 
the  case  with  zinc,  copper,  lead,  nickel, 
platinum  and  other  of  the  rarer  metals,  there 
is  no  way  of  telling  how  much  of  them  the 
earth  contains.  We  keep  continually  look- 
ing for  them  and  the  supply  varies  from 
century  to  century  as  we  have  good  luck 
or  bad  luck.  When  Columbus  discovered 
America,  he  led  the  way  to  the  mines  and 
gold  and  silver  treasures  of  Mexico  and  Peru. 
For  a  hundred  and  fifty  years  the  precious 
stream  flowed  into  the  world's  strong  boxes  at 
a  rate  never  before  equaled.  Then  it  dwin- 
dled. With  the  opening  of  the  mines  of  Cali- 
fornia, the  fountains  were  again  set  flowing. 
Australia  liberated  her  great  output.  Then 
came  other  new  "finds"  in  the  Rocky  Moun- 
tain regions,  and  in  South  Africa  furnishing  a 
tonnage  of  gold  equal  to  any  of  these.  Lastly 
comes  Alaska.  And  all  the  while,  the  science 
of  the  world  has  labored  to  make  the  methods 
of  extraction  more  efficient — until  the  output 

102 


GOLD 

of  gold  and  silver  has  become  greater  than 
ever  before,  and  seems  to  promise  a  continu- 
ous supply. 

Now  this  has  a  great  influence  on  pros- 
perity, strange  to  say.  For  gold  and  silver, 
owing  to  their  beauty,  have  been  for  ages  de- 
voted more  to  the  processes  of  hoarding  than 
of  consuming.  It  is  as  if  the  squirrels  paid 
so  much  attention  to  the  hoarding  of  nuts  as 
to  forget  that  the  real  object  of  saving  is  eat- 
ing. We  human  squirrels  do  eat  gold  and  sil- 
ver— when  we  consume  them  in  the  arts — but 
mostly  we  have  always  hoarded  them  up  in 
bars  or  ingots  or  round  pieces  called  coins, 
and  by  this  hoarding  have  created  a  per- 
manent scarcity  of  them  which  appears  to 
have  a  great  deal  of  effect  upon  their  value 
as  compared  with  other  things  of  value.  These 
gold  and  silver  nuts  we  human  squirrels  store 
in  mints  and  national  treasuries  and  banks  and 
safe-deposit  vaults  and  use  them  as  things  by 
which  to  measure  the  value  of  all  other  com- 
modities. 

In  past  ages  gold  and  silver  were  both 
103 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

used  and  still  are  in  some  countries.  But  lat- 
terly the  world,  at  the  request  of  the  financiers, 
has  rapidly  abandoned  silver  as  a  measure  of 
value  and  adopted  gold.  I  think  the  feeling 
of  the  bankers  was  that  by  the  use  of  gold 
alone  the  value-measure  would  not  be  so  apt 
to  grow  small  as  if  both  gold  and  silver  were 
used.  Financiers  are  people  who  have  debts 
due  them,  and  these  debts  are  promises  to  pay 
a  certain  number  of  dollars,  pounds,  copecks, 
marks,  yen  or  doubloons,  at  some  time  in  the 
future.  These  denominations  of  money  were 
all  by  law  equal  to  so  much  weight  of  gold  or 
silver.  When  the  double  standard  was  in 
effect,  the  debtors  would,  of  course,  pay  in  the 
one  that  happened  to  be  the  cheapest.  The 
financiers  put  in  effect  their  schemes  in  the 
double  standard  countries  to  adopt  the  single 
gold  standard,  because  it  looked  as  if  silver 
was  going  to  be  so  plentiful  that  it  would  dis- 
place gold  entirely.  Hence  the  "cross  of  gold 
and  crown  of  thorns"  speech  in  '96  and  the 
"crime  of  '73"  luridly  described  in  many  cam- 
paigns. 

104 


GOLD 

Now  a  dollar's  worth  under  the  gold  stand- 
ard, is  the  value  of  the  number  of  grains  of 
gold  in  a  legal  dollar.  If  gold  should  get  as 
plenty  as  mud,  one  could  still  weigh  out  the 
same  number  of  grains  of  it  for  a  dollar  to 
one's  creditor,  as  now,  and  take  up  his  note 
promising  to  pay  a  dollar.  If  a  region  were 
discovered  where  gold  could  be  mined  in  un- 
limited quantities  with  steam-shovels  as  is 
iron  in  the  Lake  Superior  country,  every- 
body could  pay  his  debts  easily — it  would  be 
equivalent  to  a  universal  act  of  bankruptcy. 
That  is,  a  gold  dollar  would  not  exchange 
for  more  cloth,  lumber,  meat,  wheat  or 
other  commodity  than  would  an  iron  washer 
of  the  same  weight;  and  the  producers  of 
other  commodities  besides  gold  would  be 
able  to  get  gold  enough  for  a  load  of  hogs — 
for  instance — to  pay  off  the  mortgage  on  the 
farm.  Prices,  as  measured  in  the  now  base 
metal,  gold,  would  go  kiting  as  high  as  they 
did  in  the  south  as  measured  in  the  credit  of 
the  confederacy  when  it  depreciated. 

Now,  while  we  have  not  found  any  such 
105 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

mountain  of  gold,  we  are  producing  so  much 
that  it  is  depreciating  as  compared  with  other 
things.  In  1907,  in  all  the  world  there  was 
gold  to  the  amount  of  about  seven  billions  of 
dollars.  Half  of  that  had  been  mined  in  the 
previous  ten  years,  and  the  other  half  in  all 
the  previous  history  of  the  world. 

Just  think  of  it — as  much  in  a  single  decade 
as  in  all  the  time  since  Solomon  went  into  the 
market  for  gold  for  his  temple!  No  wonder 
the  dollar  won't  buy  much!  Now  the  great 
low-grade  silver-standard  nations  like  those 
of  South  America,  Mexico,  India  and  China 
are  most  of  them  trying  to  place  themselves 
on  the  gold  standard,  and  are  absorbing  this 
new  gold  in  an  astonishing  way;  but  when 
their  wants  are  satisfied,  if  the  gold  keeps 
pouring  in,  we  shall  find  that  we  squirrels 
have  piled  up  so  many  nuts  that  their  value 
is  going  down  tremendously.  We  shall  have 
higher  prices,  increased  cost  of  living — in- 
creasing faster  and  faster  for  years.  Labor- 
ers will  be  obliged  to  struggle  harder  and 
harder  to  keep  their  pay  up  to  the  living  wage 

1 06 


GOLD 

scale,  debtors  will  be  able  to  pay  their  debts 
easier  and  easier,  there  will  be  more  labor 
trouble,  more  freedom  from  debt,  more  tur- 
bulent conditions  than  we  have  ever  seen— 
and  I  believe  greater  actual  prosperity,  even 
if  more  grief — all  because  the  passengers  are 
taking  from  the  bunkers  a  great  deal  of  metal 
which  is  not  very  useful,  but  which  is  uni- 
versally worshiped,  and  which  is  used  as  a 
measure  of  value. 

It  is  as  if  wages  and  prices  and  debts  were 
all  payable  in  cloth  measured  by  an  india- 
rubber  yardstick,  which  were  growing  shorter 
all  the  time.  Good  for  debtors,  bad  for  wages, 
and  sure  to  boost  prices. 


CHAPTER  X 

"MULTIPLY  AND  REPLENISH  THE  EARTH" 

I  HAVE  spoken  in  these  chapters  of  new 
lands  to  which  man  may  go  to  support  in- 
creased population.  Let  us  see  if  these  lands 
will  suffice.  One  of  the  funniest  stories  of  these 
times  of  ours  is  that  written  by  Ellis  Parker 
Butler,  entitled  Pigs  is  Pigs.  It  relates  to  the 
troubles  of  a  rural  expressman,  who  kept  all 
the  rules  of  the  company  as  to  taking  care 
of  a  crate  of  prolific  guinea-pigs,  while  un- 
raveling the  red  tape  of  a  dispute  over  the  rate. 
Long  before  the  correspondence  was  ended, 
the  office,  the  freight  house,  the  platform  and 
the  surrounding  city  blocks  were  full  of 
guinea-pigs.  There  was  famine  in  all  the 
things  eaten  by  guinea-pigs.  And  the  young 
pigs  were  arriving  by  Nature's  own  express 
line,  in  hourly  consignments,  each  greater 

108 


"MULTIPLY  AND  REPLENISH" 

than  the  original  one.  In  another  month  of 
such  increase  the  guinea-pigs  would  have 
been  knee-deep  in  the  streets. 

This  humorous  story  illustrates  strikingly 
the  most  wonderful,  the  most  momentous  fact 
about  living  things — embarked  on  our  air-ship 
Earth — their  tendency  to  multiply.  In  view 
of  the  fact  that  we  are  living  things,  that  we 
have  this  same  tendency  to  multiply,  and  that 
deck  room  is  already  very  valuable,  let  us  con- 
sider the  so-called  command,  "Multiply  and 
replenish  the  earth." 

The  first  plants  and  the  first  animals  were 
one-celled  little  bags  of  protoplasm.  The 
long-shaped  ones  pinched  themselves  in  two 
in  the  middle,  and  each  became  two,  and  so 
on.  The  round  ones  shoved  out  arms  like 
snails'  horns,  and  these  horns  pinched  off  near 
the  parent,  and  went  off  as  independent  or- 
ganisms, and  thus  multiplied.  Some  threw 
out  buds,  which  separated  from  the  parent,  or 
dropped  off  and  lived  on.  Many  peculiar 
ways  of  multiplication  were  developed — but 

109 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

the  living  things  did  what  no  non-living 
things  had  ever  done — they  multiplied.  The 
most  beautiful  and  most  dreadful  operation  of 
life  was  set  going. 

When  the  higher  plants  developed  they 
multiplied  by  fruits  and  seeds.  They  de- 
veloped ways  for  these  fruits  and  seeds  to  live 
over  winter  when  the  parent  died,  and  to  be 
scattered,  and  for  the  plant  to  persist  by  a 
thousand  ways.  And  among  these  higher 
plants,  the  crucial  fact  of  all  facts — sex— 
developed.  The  young  plant  was  made  up 
of  the  union  of  the  mother-cell  and  the  father- 
cell — a  new  individual  organism  made  of  the 
union  of  cells  from  two  parent  individual  or- 
ganisms. Another  fateful  step! 

The  multiplication  of  the  lower  animals 
was  accomplished — and  still  is — by  ways  quite 
similar  in  simplicity — splitting,  budding  and 
the  like.  And  with  animals  as  with  plants, 
as  soon  as  evolution  produced  species  a  little 
advanced  above  the  lowest,  the  fact  of  sex  de- 
veloped— the  greatest  fact  of  life. 

Among  animals  as  well  as  among  plants, 
no 


"MULTIPLY  AND  REPLENISH" 

save  in  the  lowest  forms,  the  new  individual 
organisms  is  made  up  of  the  union  of  cells  from 
two  parent  organisms.  In  this  fact  lies  more 
of  the  mystery  of  life — heredity,  variation, 
love — material,  paternal,  conjugal,  platonic — 
jealousy,  poetry,  religion,  the  family,  the  clan, 
the  state,  the  nation — a  thousand  million  great 
things — than  in  any  other  fact  in  the  universe. 

The  problems  of  sex  should  be  studied,  not 
sneered  at;  looked  at  reverently,  not  giggled 
at;  faced  soberly  and  respectfully,  not  blinked 
and  hidden  and  dodged.  For  in  the  problems 
of  sex  lie  the  great  riddles  confronting  all 
the  passengers  on  the  good  ship  Earth. 

All  animals  and  all  plants  multiply — or 
tend  to  do  so — to  the  very  limits  of  the  ca- 
pacity of  the  earth  to  give  them  food  and 
space.  Just  now,  I  am  not  discussing  this 
tendency  in  man — if  it  exists — I  shall  come  to 
that  later.  But  all  other  animals  do,  and  all 
plants. 

The  smaller  and  simpler  species  multiply 
faster  than  do  the  larger  and  more  complex. 
The  elephant  is  thirty  years  old  before  it 

HI 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

brings  forth  its  first  solitary  young,  while  ani- 
malcules so  small  as  to  be  microscopic  are  able 
to  multiply  from  a  single  pair  to  the  number  of 
170,000,000,000  in  four  days.  Yet  the  elephant 
and  the  animalcule  alike  obey  the  imperative 
command  to  "multiply  and  replenish  the 
earth" — just  as  fast  and  just  as  far  as  the 
earth's  conditions  will  permit.  The  oak  tree 
is  found  almost  all  over  the  earth — though  it 
increases  more  slowly  than  many  other  plants, 
it  lives  a  thousand  years.  The  smaller  wheat 
plant,  if  given  space  and  plant  food,  would 
spread  all  over  the  surface  of  the  earth  while 
the  oak  was  getting  ready  to  bear  its  first 
acorn — but  the  wheat  plant  does  not  occupy 
more  of  the  decks  of  the  good  ship  Earth 
than  the  oak,  for  all  that — or  would  not  if  left 
unaided  in  the  struggle.  Both  increase  to  the 
limits  which  their  food  and  their  enemies  will 
allow. 

That  green  rash  which  breaks  out  all  over 
the  decks  of  our  good  ship  Earth,  called 
vegetation,  is  then,  composed  of  an  innumera- 
ble host  of  warring  plant-forms.  Each  tries 

112 


"MULTIPLY  AND  REPLENISH" 

to  crowd  the  other  out.  The  fittest  survive. 
Some  produce  innumerable  seeds,  and  trust 
to  chance  for  the  planting  thereof.  Some  live 
by  thorns.  Some  stick  their  seeds  fast  to  ani- 
mals. Some  produce  good  fruit  with  hard 
seeds  inside  so  that  birds  and  animals  will 
scatter  them.  The  ones  with  the  most  success- 
ful tricks  survive. 

So  with  animals.  Each  multiplies  to  the 
limits  allowed  by  its  food-supply,  and  its  dis- 
eases and  its  enemies. 

There  are  always  other  animals  whose  exist- 
ence and  multiplication  are  at  the  expense  of 
any  animal  in  question.  There  are  pests  and 
parasites.  And  there  is  the  question  of  get- 
ting food.  If  food  is  plenty,  and  enemies  are 
scarce,  and  diseases  and  pests  are  absent,  the 
animal  increases — whether  it  be  giraffe  or 
dodo  or  sparrow.  If  the  food  is  scarce,  or  the 
enemies  successful,  or  the  diseases  and  pests 
bad,  the  race  decreases.  There  is  always  a 
tide  in  the  affairs  of  animals  and  plants  as  in 
those  of  men — it  either  ebbs  or  flows.  Some- 
times it  ebbs  until  a  race  is  wiped  out — like 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

the  fossil  animals  we  read  of  and  see  in  the 
museums :  the  dodo  just  spoken  of,  and  the  pas- 
senger pigeon  which  many  people  now  living 
have  seen,  but  which  is  no  more.  This  ebbing 
and  flowing  of  the  racial  tide  is  called  a 
"moving  equilibrium."  It  is  like  the  tug  of 
war  when  two  sides  pull  at  a  rope — each  side 
is  always  losing — or  gaining — until  one  def- 
initely wins. 

Enemies  keep  the  race  from  increasing — 
that  is  war. 

Pests  and  diseases  prey  on  the  race  and  keep 
down  its  numbers — that  is  pestilence. 

Food  supply  grows  too  small  for  the  multi- 
plied hosts  and  they  starve — that  is  famine. 

War,  pestilence,  famine!  These  are  the 
genii  with  which  Nature  keeps  her  balance 
even  between  the  warring  species  of  both 
plants  and  animals.  Without  war,  pestilence 
and  famine,  there  is  not  one  species  which 
would  not  eventually  ruthlessly  crowd  every- 
thing else  off  the  earth,  driven  as  they  all  are 
by  the  irresistible  urge  to  multiply. 

But  man  is  an  animal — is  he  exempt  from 


"MULTIPLY  AND  REPLENISH" 

the  rule?  Did  God  place  him  on  this  huge 
round  Zeppelin  of  the  skies,  and  decree  that 
he,  too,  must  multiply  until  the  good  ship 
"Earth  can  no  longer  nourish  him,  and  there- 
fore unless  he  is  decimated  by  war,  he  shall 
fall  by  the  sickle  of  pestilence,  and  if  he  es- 
capes war  and  pestilence,  that  poverty  must 
destroy  him  by  famine? 

"Is  this  the  thing  the  Lord  God  made,  and 

gave 
To  have  dominion  over  land  and  sea?" 

And  is  this  the  sort  of  "dominion"  He  gave? 

War,  pestilence  and  famine — these  three 
are  essential  to  the  keeping  in  check  of  the 
multiplication  of  all  plants  and  animals. 
War  with  the  plants  and  animals  which 
struggle  with  them  for  food  and  space  and 
which  prey  upon  them — for  there  are  plants 
that  prey  upon  other  plants,  and  even  on 
animals.  Pestilence — which  is  merely  the  in- 
roads of  other  plants  and  animals  too  small  to 
be  seen,  and  of  weaknesses  of  constitution  and 
their  effects.  Famine- — which  is  the  failure 
of  a  part  of  the  species  to  get  food. 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

These  three  check  all  organisms  in  their 
conquering  march  to  possess  the  earth.  They 
must  in  the  nature  of  things.  For  if  war  fail, 
and  pestilence  withhold  its  stroke,  the  myriads 
will  grow  so  great  that  famine  will  come  as  a 
matter  of  course. 

It  is  a  law  of  nature.  It  applies  to  all  liv- 
ing things,  unless  man  be  the  solitary  excep- 
tion. 

There  have  been  those,  like  Malthus,  Spen- 
cer and  their  school,  who  have  insisted  upon 
war,  pestilence  and  famine  among  men  as  a 
part  of  the  natural  order  owing  to  the  tend- 
ency of  human  beings  to  multiply  beyond  the 
resources  of  the  earth  to  afford  them  means 
of  living. 

There  are  many  others  who,  lacking  the 
fortitude  to  look  the  predicament  of  man 
squarely  in  the  face,  have  said:  "Oh!  There's 
a  way,  and  always  will  be  a  way  for  all  men 
to  live.  Why,  the  state  of  Texas  would  sup- 
port the  entire  population  of  the  world,  if 
it  had  to!  Let's  be  optimistic!" 

Others  there  have  been,  and  of  these  Henry 
116 


"MULTIPLY  AND  REPLENISH" 

George  is  the  best  example,  who,  looking  the 
case  fairly  in  the  face,  have  denied  the  tend- 
ency of  the  human  race  to  multiply  beyond  the 
limits  of  subsistence,  and  Mr.  George  has 
even  suggested  that  it  does  not  increase  in 
numbers  in  the  long  run  at  all.  He  denies  that 
density  of  population  has  ever  in  the  world  up 
to  this  time  necessarily  produced  poverty.  And 
until  it  does  so  produce  poverty  he  refuses  to 
admit  the  inherent  inevitability  of  the  sweep- 
ing off  of  redundant  population  by  either  war 
or  pestilence. 

Men  of  the  George  school  have  made  the 
strongest  case  which  has  been  made  against  the 
argument  that  man,  an  animal,  like  all  other 
living  beings,  tends  to  multiply,  if  given  a 
chance,  to  the  limits  of  subsistence.  And  their 
appeal  to  Divine  justice,  and  their  defense  of 
God  against  His  alleged  detractors  has  been 
perhaps  the  most  impressive  of  their  appeals 
to  the  world. 

"Has  God,"  they  say,  "more  inhuman  than 
the  cruelest  ship-owner,  placed  on  the  ship 
Earth  a  potential  population  which  the  sup- 

117 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

plies  are  inadequate  to  feed?  Has  He  so  ar- 
ranged matters  that  if  these  human  beings 
escape  pestilence,  and  in  obedience  to  the  pre- 
cepts of  love  refrain  from  killing  one  another, 
they  must  die  of  want?  No  blackguard  on 
the  water-front  would  do  such  a  thing!  God 
has  not  done  it!" 

In  spite  of  the  tremendous  force  of  this  ar- 
gument, let  us  look  at  it.  For  there  is  tre- 
mendous force  in  the  principle  of  multiplica- 
tion, too.  Let  us  first  ask  ourselves,  Does  the 
race  tend  to  increase?  And  does  it  actually 
increase? 

It  has  been  pointed  out  that  in  the  old  na- 
tions— Egypt,  Assyria,  Babylon,  Medo-Persia 
— there  were  immense  populations.  There 
were ;  but  we  have  no  means  of  determining 
what  they  were.  There  is  no  reason  to  believe, 
though,  that  they  were  as  great  as  our  popula- 
tions of  to-day — or  that  the  increase  the  world 
over  was  ever  so  rapid  as  now.  Within  the 
past  century,  the  world  has  come  under  ob- 
servation to  an  unprecedented  degree,  and  we 

118 


"MULTIPLY  AND  REPLENISH" 

know  as  never  before  what  the  roster  of  the 
passengers  amounts  to. 

Gibbon  calculates  the  population  of  the 
Roman  Empire  at  its  height  at  120,000,000. 
The  regions  then  included  in  the  Roman  Em- 
pire are  now  more  than  twice  as  populous. 
Five  hundred  years  ago,  Europe  had  probably 
about  50,000,000  people;  she  now  has  380,- 
000,000.  North  America  has  a  population  of 
100,000,000  drawn  from  Europe  and  natural 
increase,  in  the  main,  which  she  has  gained  in 
a  hundred  years,  save  about  5,000,000. 

Whatever  may  have  been  the  state  of  knowl- 
edge in  the  past,  there  is  now  no  lack  of  proof 
that  the  tendency  of  population  is  to  increase. 
We  can  see  a  startling  increase  in  our  day. 

This  is  an  age  in  which  famines  are  much 
less  frequent  than  of  old,  and  wars,  while  fre- 
quent, do  not  destroy  such  large  populations 
as  formerly.  In  the  civilized  nations  sanitation 
and  scientific  progress  are  reducing  disease  to 
the  point  of  greatly  weakening  the  factor  of 
pestilence  in  checking  increase. 

119 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

In  1882,  the  total  population  of  the  world, 
according  to  statistics  which  while  not  exact, 
are  reasonably  so,  was  in  round  numbers 
1,433,000,000.  In  1907  it  had  increased  to 
1,606,000,000.  The  increase,  in  exacter  fig- 
ures, in  the  twenty- five  years  was  172,738,000. 

Thus  in  twenty-five  years,  we  passengers  on 
the  good  ship  Earth  increased  by  more  than 
the  whole  population  of  the  western  hemis- 
phere !  We  grew  in  numbers  by  as  many  peo- 
ple as  twice  the  population  of  the  United 
States  at  the  beginning  of  the  period. 

If  it  were  really  a  ship,  and  the  passenger 
list  were  growing  at  that  rate,  would  you  not 
feel  anxious  if  you  were  on  board  and  could 
not  get  off?  And  yet,  that  is  the  situation. 

At  this  rate  in  twenty  years  from  now,  there 
will  be  1,767,000,000  on  board;  in  forty- five 
years,  1,943,000,000;  in  seventy  years,  2,138,- 
000,000;  in  five  hundred  years  10,000,000,000; 
and  in  six  hundred  years,  we  shall  be  making 
a  growth  in  the  number  of  people  every  quar- 
ter of  a  century,  equal  to  the  whole  population 
of  the  globe  in  the  year  1900! 

120 


"MULTIPLY  AND  REPLENISH" 

Some  of  you  may  have  smiled  at  the  idea 
I  have  developed  that  the  warming  of  the  cli- 
mate of  the  earth  by  the  carbonic  acid  gas 
in  the  air  may,  and  probably  will,  bring  into 
use  as  good  farming  countries  millions  of 
square  miles  now  too  cold.  But  if  this  in- 
crease keeps  on,  shall  we  not  need  it?  And 
shall  we  not  need  to  save  the  phosphorus  and 
potash  and  nitrogen  of  the  soil,  and  haul  on 
all  we  can  find,  and  save  the  washing  of  the 
soil,  and  conserve  the  forests,  and  look  after 
the  nitrates  and  the  coal? 

Does  it  not  look  as  if  the  Malthusians  and 
Spencerians  are  right?  Are  not  war,  pestilence 
and  famine  necessary?  If  they  do  not  check 
this  multiplication,  what  will? 

After  all,  is  not  God  mocked? 

These  things  demand  further  consideration. 

Increase  of  population  is  usually  regarded 
as  a  good  thing.  We  Americans  are  espe- 
cially prone  to  think  of  a  growing  popula- 
tion as  a  great  thing  for  the  country.  We 
strive  to  attract  people  to  our  states,  our 
cities,  our  towns.  We  stuff  local  census 

121 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

figures  sometimes  to  show  growth  even  when 
we  have  had  none.  We  hide  our  heads  in 
shame  when  the  statistics  show  a  loss  of  pop- 
ulation, or  a  gain  supposed  to  be  too  small. 

This  excessive  esteem  for  mere  numerical 
increase  arises  from  the  fact  that  our  deck 
room  on  the  good  ship  Earth  a  hundred  years 
ago  was  poor  in  people  and  rich  in  space  which 
hungered  for  them.  There  were  few  passen- 
gers and  much  deck  room.  Life  on  board 
was  poor  and  starved  because  there  were  so 
few  people  that  they  could  not  well  help  one 
another,  nor  build  up  a  full  and  complete  life. 
It  is  much  better  in  most  ways  in  America 
with  a  hundred  millions  than  it  was  with  five. 

And  it  really  has  been  in  some  way  discred- 
itable to  an  American  state  or  city  or  town  not 
to  grow.  It  meant  that  the  soil  was  poor,  or 
the  government  was  bad,  or  the  people  dis- 
agreeable. So  shame  is  the  proper  feeling  in 
the  one  case  and  regret  in  the  other  at  the  fail- 
ure of  population  to  increase. 

But  we  must  not  get  into  the  habit  of  think- 
ing because  the  ship  once  had  too  few  passen- 

122 


"MULTIPLY  AND  REPLENISH" 

gers  on  a  part  of  the  decks  shut  off  from  the 
others  by  water,  and  that  a  hundred  years  ago, 
that  the  steady  increase  of  numbers  on  the  part 
of  the  human  race — the  passengers  on  the 
great  terrestrial  air-ship  Earth — is  good,  or  a 
salutary  thing,  no  matter  what  any  one  may 
say. 

In  the  quarter  of  a  century  succeeding  1882 
the  population  of  the  Earth  increased  one- 
eighth.  At  this  rate,  in  five  hundred  years 
there  will  be  ten  billions  of  us.  In  six  hun- 
dred years  our  increase  every  twenty-five 
years  will  be  more  than  the  whole  number  of 
us  in  1882! 

And  there  is  every  reason  to  believe  that 
never  in  history  were  the  passengers  multi- 
plying as  fast  as  now. 

It  behooves  us  to  consider  what  happens 
when  populations  get  too  dense. 

Statistics  show  that  Belgium  is  more  thick- 
ly peopled  than  any  other  nation,  but  such  sta- 
tistics mean  nothing.  Belgium  is  mainly  a 
cluster  of  cities,  and  a  city  is  not  self-sustain- 
ing. It  is  one  end  only  of  the  equation,  one 

'123 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

member  of  the  proportion.  Belgium,  Hol- 
land, Manhattan  and  the  island  of  Great  Brit- 
ain are  places  where  people  are  gathered  to- 
gether to  do  certain  things;  and  those  on 
farms,  in  ships,  in  railway  cars,  in  wilder- 
nesses, and  on  sheep  ranges  and  cattle  ranches, 
and  in  forests,  who  are  coworkers  with  these 
city  dwellers  to  make  up  a  complete  indus- 
trial community,  should  be  taken  into  ac- 
count when  density  of  population  is  reckoned. 

Cheyenne,  Wyoming,  is  densely  populated, 
but  the  Cheyenne  territory  is  sparse  of  settlers. 
When  the  crew  of  a  ship  gathers  to  furl  the 
sails,  the  yards  are  thickly  populated;  but  the 
ship  may  be  undermanned.  So,  while  Bel- 
gium, Holland,  Great  Britain,  Manhattan 
and  Cheyenne  may  some  of  them  be  over- 
populated,  they  are  not  all  so,  and  may  none 
of  them  be.  For  they  are  the  places  where  the 
passengers — who  are  also  the  crew — of  the 
good  ship  Earth  are  gathered  to  work  the 
vessel — for  mutual  aid  and  cooperation. 

To  find  the  places  where  the  Earth  is  really 
over-populated,  one  must  go  to  the  Orient — to 


"MULTIPLY  AND  REPLENISH" 

China,  Japan,  Korea  and  India.  And  here, 
where  the  population  presses  on  subsistence, 
we  find  what  we  shall  one  day  find  in  these 
dear  states  of  ours,  if  the  universal  law  of  mul- 
tiplication goes  on  unchecked.  We  find 
squalor  unspeakable,  misery  indescribable, 
fear  in  the  heart  of  every  man,  and  four-fifths 
of  the  thoughts  of  every  mind  and  of  the  ut- 
terances of  every  mouth  related  to  food! 

Extremes  meet.  When  animal  life  began, 
it  began  in  the  ameba,  an  animal  which  was 
all  stomach.  And  in  the  twentieth  century, 
where  human  life  has  followed  the  line  of 
animal  increase  to  the  very  limit,  man  gravi- 
tates back  to  the  point  of  losing  "the  upward 
looking  and  the  light,"  and  becoming  again 
a  creature,  eighty  per  cent,  of  whose  intellec- 
tual activities  are  monopolized  by  the  de- 
mands of  his  hunger.  He  has  again  become 
for  all  human  purposes,  an  embodied  stomach. 
In  all  the  list  of  tragedies  there  is  none  so 
awful. 

In  these  crowded  spaces,  meat  is  scarcely 
ever  eaten,  not  because  of  any  belief  in  veg- 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

etarianism,  but  from  the  fact  that  more  than 
five  times  as  many  people  can  be  fed  from  the 
land  with  vegetable  food  as  with  meats.  Flesh 
and  blood  are  so  cheap  that  they  drive  out 
steam  and  steel  in  such  work  as  sinking  piles 
and  carrying  burdens.  Animals  can  not  be 
used  in  tillage  where  men  are  so  plentiful.  A 
man  will  carry  a  ton  of  canal  mud  for  fer- 
tilizer five  hundred  feet  for  three  and  a  half 
cents.  For  this  he  can  buy  only  eight  eggs,  or 
five  ounces  of  pork — so  it  is  clear  that  his  life 
can  not  be  supported  on  animal  food  at  such 
wages.  The  three  and  a  half  cents  will  there- 
fore be  spent  for  ten  ounces  of  potatoes,  or  six 
pounds  of  clover  to  be  cooked  and  eaten,  or 
two  and  a  half  pounds  of  beans,  or  a  pound 
and  a  half  of  peanuts,  or  three  pounds  of 
shelled  corn,  or  a  pound  of  bean  curd,  or,  as 
is,  of  course,  usually  the  case,  for  a  mixture  of 
these. 

"Incredibly  small,"  says  Doctor  Ross,  "are 
the  portions  prepared  for  sale  by  the  huckster. 
Two  cubic  inches  of  bean  curd,  four  walnuts, 
five  peanuts,  fifteen  roasted  chestnuts,  twenty 

126 


"MULTIPLY  AND  REPLENISH" 

melon  seeds — make  a  portion."  No  wonder 
that  in  six  weeks  he  saw  only  one  man  read- 
ing— and  he  had  fallen  asleep  over  his  book. 
No  wonder  that  instead  of  asking  a  chance- 
met  person  how  he  makes  his  living,  the  Chi- 
nese asks,  "How  do  you  get  through  the  day!" 

No  wonder  that  girl  babies  are  exposed  and 
allowed  to  die.  Who  shall  say  that  this  is  not 
the  truest  mercy?  No  wonder  that  the  chief 
magistrate  of  a  Chinese  city  on  being  told 
that  the  infection  of  bubonic  plague  could  be 
kept  out,  asked  why  it  should  be  kept  out,  in 
view  of  the  fact  that  there  are  too  many  peo- 
ple! The  Chinese,  their  multiplication  un- 
checked by  the  wars  they  have  found  out  how 
to  avoid,  may  be  excused  if  they  choose  pes- 
tilence rather  than  famine. 

I  know  that  many  readers  will  say  that  this 
poverty  must  come  from  the  fact  that  the  peo- 
ple are  robbed  by  the  aristocracy,  or  by  the 
monopolies,  or  by  the  government,  or  that  they 
do  not  make  the  best  use  of  their  resources — 
or  that  there  is  some  other  reason  for  this  su- 
premely dreadful  condition  of  affairs  than 

127 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

mere  pressure  of  numbers  on  the  possibilities 
of  food  production.  If  God  is  not  to  be  ac- 
cused of  the  supreme  cruelty  of  placing  more 
passengers  on  this  good  ship  Earth  than  she 
can  carry,  then  some  other  reason  must  be 
found  for  this  poverty,  you  say? 

That  question — which  carries  us  to  the 
greatest  of  all  human  questions — must  be 
glanced  at  hereafter.  Just  now  it  is  well  to 
remember  that  increase  of  population  is  the 
greatest  evil  by  which  the  world  is  threat- 
ened. 

Let  us  assume  a  pair  of  guinea-pigs  in  the 
Ark,  and  her  voyage  so  long  as  to  bring  into 
play  the  forces  that  filled  with  young  guinea- 
pigs  the  life  and  the  vicinity  of  the  hero  of 
Pigs  is  Pigs. 

This  would  have  presented  a  puzzling 
problem  to  our  grandsire  Noah,  would  it 
not?  We  can  imagine  the  venerable  prophet 
troubled  at  the  growing  scourge  of  guinea- 
pigs.  The  provisions  would  have  been  inade- 
quate for  them. 

128 


"MULTIPLY  AND  REPLENISH" 

But  suppose  the  Noah  family  themselves 
had  so  multiplied?  Would  the  case  have  been 
any  better  than  if  the  famine  had  come  from 
guinea-pigs,  lions,  tigers  or  serpents?  Would 
it  not  have  been  the  worst  case  possible,  if 
the  increase  had  been  in  human  beings?  For 
guinea-pigs,  lions,  tigers  or  serpents  could 
have  been  killed  and  thrown  overboard — or 
eaten;  while  against  the  thinning  out  of  the 
redundant  passengers,  there  was  set  the  com- 
mandment, "Thou  shalt  not  kill." 

I  have  been  trying  to  get  some  light  on  the 
very  problem  I  have  imagined  as  confronting 
the  Noah  family.  For  our  good  ship  Earth 
seems  to  be  in  some  of  her  decks  already  over- 
populated — not  with  properly  killable  brute 
beasts,  but  with  men  and  women  and  children. 
This  over-population,  I  have  suggested,  is  the 
cause  of  the  poverty  of  the  masses  in  China, 
Japan  and  other  Oriental  parts.  Many  readers 
protest,  saying:  "If  poverty  comes  from  the 
irresistible  forces  of  nature  urging  living  be- 
ings to  multiply — forces  which  rule  man  as 
imperiously  as  brutes  and  plants,  then  why 

129 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

try  to  justify  the  ways  of  God  to  man,  or  to 
cure  poverty?  Why  not  let  loose  the  dogs  of 
war,  and  close  the  medical  research  labora- 
tories and  the  health  bureaus?  Is  it  not  better 
to  keep  the  passengers  thinned  out  by  war, 
than  for  them  to  perish  by  pestilence?  And 
is  not  quick  decimation  by  pestilence  better 
than  that  slow  killing  of  the  soul  as  well  as  the 
body  which  comes  from  poverty?" 

These  are  questions  which  can  not  be 
evaded,  but  must  be  met  I  hope  to  meet  them 
fairly  in  good  time. 

The  poverty  of  the  masses  in  the  Orient  is 
full  of  awful  interest  to  us — of  awful  warning 
and  of  a  sort  of  fearful  hope.  It  shows  us  the 
dread  condition  which  comes  from  over-pop- 
ulation—which is  a  matter  for  fear.  It  in- 
forms us  of  the  long,  long  road  we  have  to 
travel  before  we  reach  that  point — which  is 
food  for  hope — hope  that  we  may  on  the  jour- 
ney find  some  way  out  of  the  toils  of  our  own 
fecundity. 

Those  who  say  that  such  poverty  as  we  Cau- 
casians now  suffer  from  is  in  no  manner  caused 

[130 


"MULTIPLY  AND  REPLENISH" 

by  over-population  are  right.  We  have  in  these 
United  States  still  more  than  twenty  acres  for 
the  sustenance  of  every  person.  In  Japan 
there  is  bat  a  third  of  an  acre.  Some  Jap- 
anese, however,  are  supported  by  trade  and 
manufactures,  and  draw  their  support  from 
other  acres  than  those  of  Japan.  But  in  the 
Shangtung  province  of  China,  Doctor  King 
found  lands  supporting  3,840  people  of  a 
strictly  rural  population  to  the  square  mile,  or 
240  to  a  forty-acre  farm.  The  island  of  Chung- 
ming,  with  270  square  miles,  has  3,700  people 
to  the  square  mile,  and  only  one  large  city 
any  part  of  whose  people  could  draw  sus- 
tenance from  outside  the  island.  It  is  safe  to 
say,  therefore,  that  until  our  population 
doubles  once  or  twice,  such  poverty  as  we  have 
must  be  laid  to  other  doors  than  that  of  the 
increase  of  population. 

Even  China  and  Japan  may  by  collective  gov- 
ernmental energy  bring  into  use  lands  which 
the  very  agony  of  individual  struggle  for  ex- 
istence has  not  been  able  to  utilize.  Engineer- 
ing and  flood  prevention  may  make  room  for 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

tens  of  millions  more  in  China.  Mining  of 
fertilizing  rocks  may  increase  crops,  and  again 
bring  in  exhausted  and  denuded  areas.  Japan, 
if  all  hillside  lands  with  a  slope  of  fifteen  de- 
grees or  less  are  brought  under  tillage,  may 
add  sixty-five  per  cent,  to  her  farmed  acreage, 
and  thus  allow  an  increase  of  population  to  a 
hundred  millions.  But  no  discovery  of  science 
can,  so  far  as  can  be  seen,  take  from  the  soil 
what  is  not  in  it,  nor  enable  agriculture  to 
make  food  of  anything  but  plants  fed  from  the 
plant  food  in  the  soil.  So  that  poverty  is  sure 
to  recur,  if  the  present  birth-rate  of  these  na- 
tions keeps  up,  no  matter  if  the  whole  earth 
were  theirs.  They  are  not  made  poor  by  their 
oppressors,  but  by  their  birth-rate. 

It  might  be  possible  to  make  some  show  of 
denial  of  this  as  to  the  Japanese;  for  they  have 
most  of  the  paraphernalia  of  industrial  rob- 
bery and  exploitation.  But  in  the  Hoang-Ho 
Valley  of  China,  and  especially  in  such  fertile 
areas  as  the  Chengtu  plain,  where  from  three 
to  four  thousand  people  live  on  each  square 
mile,  the  law  of  the  pressure  of  population  on 

132 


"MULTIPLY  AND  REPLENISH" 

substance  caused  by  redundancy  of  population 
is  in  stark,  plain,  full  operation. 

"Are  not  these  people  in  some  way  robbed?" 
I  asked  of  Professor  E.  A.  Ross.  "The  per- 
centage of  production  which  goes  to  the  non- 
producers,"  said  he,  "can  not  be  more  than 
two  or  three  per  cent."  Wipe  out  even  that 
small  concession  to  parasitic  hands,  and  the 
birth-rate  would  restore  poverty  in  its  orig- 
inal awfulness  in  a  year.  In  his  book,  The 
Changing  Chinese,  he  repeats  this.  "Nor," 
says  he,  "is  the  lot  of  the  masses  due  to  ex- 
ploitation. In  the  cities  there  is  a  sprink- 
ling of  rich,  but  out  in  the  provinces  one  may 
travel  for  weeks  and  see  no  sign  of  a  wealthy 
class — no  mansion  or  fine  country  place,  no 
equipage  befitting  the  rich.  There  are  great 
stretches  of  fertile  agricultural  country  where 
the  struggle  for  existence  is  stern  and  yet  the 
cultivator  owns  his  land  and  implements  and 
pays  tribute  to  no  man." 

The  long  strife  with  nature  for  subsistence 
has  stripped  off  even  the  parasite  from  the 
shoulders  of  these  sober,  honest  and  thrifty 

133 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

men.  There  is  no  surplus  on  which  the  non- 
worker  can  live.  Farming  is  so  perfect  that 
even  the  greatest  agricultural  expert  of  our 
time,  the  late  F.  H.  King,  could  see  no  way  in 
which  our  science  can  materially  help  them. 
Our  best  agricultural  practise  seems  barbarous 
compared  with  theirs.  If  good  farming,  good 
soil,  feverish  and  unremitting  industry,  prac- 
tical freedom  from  taxes,  and  the  enjoyment  of 
practically  all  the  produce  of  their  labor  could 
keep  them  from  poverty,  these  people  would 
not  be  poor.  Yet  they  are  so  poor  that  eight 
out  of  ten  of  their  children  die  in  infancy. 
The  land  can  not  support  the  increase. 

So,  while  we  need  not  yet  lay  any  of  our 
western  poverty  to  pressure  of  population,  we 
should  remember  that  this  awful  evil  seems  to 
be  approaching.  Our  population  has  grown 
from  38,000,000,  in  1870,  to  92,000,000; 
Japan's  in  the  same  time  from  33,000,000  to 
50,000,000;  Russia's  from  73,000,000  to  160,- 
000,000;  Germany's  from  41,000,000  to  64,- 
000,000;  Great  Britain's  from  31,000,000  to 
45,000,000;  Italy's  from  26,000,000  to  34,- 

134 


"MULTIPLY  AND  REPLENISH" 

000,000;  Austria  Hungary's  from  35,000,000 
to  51,000,000;  while  even  France,  whose  pop- 
ulation increases  more  slowly  than  that  of  any 
other  nation,  has  grown  from  36,000,000  to 
39,000,000. 

The  urge  to  multiply  bears  man  on  to  the 
same  goal,  apparently,  as  the  sparrow  and  the 
worm — to  the  exhaustion  of  subsistence.  Doc- 
tor W  J  McGee  has  made  calculations  that  in 
three  hundred  years  the  United  States  will 
have  acquired  a  population  of  a  billion — and 
reached  the  limit.  The  limit  means  conditions 
like  those  in  Chengtu.  Let  the  passengers  on 
the  good  ship  Earth  consider  these  things  I 


CHAPTER  XI 

THE    KIND    OF    PASSENGERS    THAT    MULTIPLY 

FATHER  NOAH,  on  the  Ark,  fortunate- 
ly had  a  voyage  so  short  that  the  tend- 
ency of  his  live  stock — human  and  brute — to 
swarm  and  increase  in  numbers,  probably  gave 
him  no  trouble. 

But  we  on  board  the  good  ship  Earth  are 
doomed  to  a  voyage  of  Infinite  length.  1.1  is 
an  awful  truth  that  every  living  thing  on 
board  tends  to  multiply,  and  that  plants  and 
animals  all  do  multiply  until  their  further  in- 
crease is  stopped  by  lack  of  food — which  is 
famine;  by  encroachments  on  their  increasing 
numbers — which  is  war,  or  by  parasites  and 
pests — which  is  pestilence. 

We  know,  too,  that  man  tends  to  multiply 
— the  Noah  family  already  numbers  thirty- 
two  people  to  every  square  mile  of  land  on 
our  old  Ark,  Earth,  counting  in  desert,  swamp, 
rock  and  sand,  as  well  as  arable. 

-136 


PASSENGERS  THAT  MULTIPLY 

And  this  human  swarm  is  growing  faster 
than  ever.  There  are  great  authorities  who 
declare  that  war,  pestilence  and  famine  are  as 
inherent  in  the  frame  of  human  society,  as  in 
that  of  wolves,  rabbits,  worms  and  fishes. 

All  we  can  say  is  that  if  this  is  not  true,  man 
is  the  only  living  thing  of  which  it  is  not  true. 

But  if  it  is  true,  what  shall  we  say  of  a  God 
who  placed  us  here,  with  the  urge  upon  us  to 
multiply  so  coercive  that  it  has  filled  the 
Orient  with  three  thousand  people  to  the 
square  mile? 

Two  of  the  most  virile  minds  in  the  world 
are  Theodore  Roosevelt  and'  Rudyard  Kip- 
ling. In  many  ways  they  are  alike.  Both  are 
something  in  the  Berserker  line — stark  sav- 
age men,  each  with  a  bushel  of  brains.  Each 
has  his  ideas  on  this  matter  of  population — 
and  they  seem  to  be  opposite  ideas.  In  a  re- 
cent story  Kipling,  prophesying  of  the  year 
2000,  sees  the  population  of  the  world  de- 
creasing to  six  hundred  million,  five  hundred, 
and  then  to  four  hundred  and  fifty.  "The 
planet,"  says  one  of  his  characters,  "has  taken 

137 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

all  precautions  against  crowds  for  the  past 
hundred  years."  "Anyhow,"  says  another, 
"men  live  a  century  apiece  on  the  average, 
now."  "We  are  all  rich  and  happy,"  says  an- 
other, "because  we  are  so  few  and  live  so 
long."  In  this  story  Kipling  sees  human 
powers  so  far  increased  that  a  girl  runs  a  cul- 
tivator by  means  of  an  electric  switch  in  the 
house.  So,  if  I  have  got  his  meaning,  prophe- 
sies Rudyard  Kipling. 

Roosevelt,  on  the  other  hand,  seems  to  fear 
evil  from  a  decreasing  birth-rate.  He  cries 
out  against  what  he  calls  race  suicide.  I  do 
not  think  he  has  uttered  his  full  thought  in 
the  premises,  perhaps  for  reasons  of  policy. 
I  suspect  that  there  be  people  whom  he  would 
like  to  see  having  fewer  children,  and  those 
whom  he  would  fain  see  rear  more. 

This  brings  us  passengers  on  the  good  ship 
Earth  to  a  consideration  of  the  kind  of  passen- 
gers who  do  multiply,  and  the  sort,  if  any,  who 
do  not.  If  there  is  a  sort  which  do  not,  are 
they  better  or  worse  passengers  than  those  who 
do?  If  we  are  to  stay  on  this  spinning  air-ship 


PASSENGERS  THAT  MULTIPLY 

as  it  shoots  through  space — if  we  can  not  get 
off  save  by  death,  and  if  our  descendants  are 
to  sail  on  after  we  have  been  absorbed  back 
into  the  decks  from  which  we  rose,  the  ques- 
tion must  be  of  interest.  If  we  really  think, 
must  it  not  be  the  one  of  the  most  interesting 
of  all  questions? 

The  Chinese  have  an  annual  birth-rate  of 
between  fifty  and  sixty  to  the  thousand.  In 
Russia  it  is  forty-nine.  In  French  Canada  it 
is  probably  equal  to  the  Russian  rate.  In 
Japan  it  is  only  a  little,  if  any,  less.  In  Ger- 
many it  is  thirty-five.  In  German  Austria  and 
Spain  it  is  thirty-four.  In  Italy,  Holland  and 
Finland  it  is  about  thirty-three.  In  Norway, 
Denmark,  England,  Scotland  and  Belgium  it 
is  about  twenty-nine.  In  the  United  States  as 
a  whole  it  is  probably  about  the  same.  In 
Australia  and  New  Zealand  it  is  about  twenty- 
five.  In  Ireland  it  is  twenty-three.  In  France 
it  is  twenty-one. 

Look  at  it!  Russians,  Chinese,  Japanese 
and  such  similar  populations,  already  swarm- 
ing as  those  of  Hungary,  growing  like  genera- 

139 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

tions  of  midges  as  compared  with  the  Yan- 
kees, Irish,  British,  French  and  the  British 
Colonials! 

Note  this,  too — wherever  there  is  a  high  av- 
erage of  intelligence,  the  birth-rate  is  low. 
This  is  true  within  the  limits  of  every  society. 
We  must  not  imagine  that  all  classes  in  Rus- 
sia, China,  Hungary,  French  Canada  or  else- 
where are  so  astonishingly  prolific.  We  may 
be  sure  that  there,  as  here,  the  huge  families 
are  found  mainly  in  the  tiny  homes  of  the 
ignorant.  Is  there  not  here  a  glimpse  of  the 
two  courses  open  to  the  world — widely  dis- 
seminated high  intelligence  and  a  low  birth- 
rate, as  against  a  high  birth-rate  and  general 
and  widespread  ignorance? 

We  are  here  looking  into  the  very  core  of 
the  riddle  of  the  Sphinx. 

It  is  of  importance,  too,  to  every  passenger 
on  the  good  ship  Earth  to  take  notice  of  the 
fact  that  while  we  are  animals,  the  conditions 
which  are  favorable  to  the  multiplication  of 
all  other  animals  do  not  seem  to  affect  the 
human  race  in  the  same  way.  This  is  some- 

140 


PASSENGERS  THAT  MULTIPLY 

thing  which  we  are  only  just  beginning  to 
realize.  Herbert  Spencer  denied  it.  But  the 
facts  show  that  man  in  the  conditions  deter- 
mining his  tendency  to  multiply  is  different 
in  some  respects  from  all  other  animals. 

All  other  animals  multiply  faster  when  they 
have  plenty  of  food  and  adequate  shelter — in 
other  words,  when  they  are  in  vigorous  con- 
dition physically,  and  when  life  is  easy.  But 
look  at  the  facts  as  to  man. 

Sir  J.  A.  Baines  says  that  in  France  "gen- 
eral well-being  reaches  probably  a  lower 
depth  in  the  community  than  in  any  other  part 
of  Europe" — in  other  words,  France  has  the 
highest  general  average  of  comfort.  She  has 
the  lowest  birth-rate  in  the  world. 

There  are  some  special  reasons  for  the  low 
Irish  birth-rate,  but  the  principal  ones  are  the 
high  comparative  intelligence  and  prosperity 
of  the  island. 

The  poorest  people  in  North  America  north 
of  the  Spanish  nations  are  the  French 
Canadians,  and  the  most  illiterate — and  their 
birth-rate  is  the  highest.  The  thrifty  and  in- 

141 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

tellectual  Yankees,  of  New  England,  probably 
have  the  lowest  birth-rate  on  this  continent. 

The  Boers,  of  South  Africa,  have  a  very 
high  birth-rate  and  are  very  prosperous — but 
they  are  extremely  ignorant. 

The  Russian  peasants,  degraded,  ignorant, 
besotted,  illiterate  and  poverty-stricken,  are 
almost  as  prolific  as  the  Chinese.  The  Hun- 
garians belong  to  the  Central  European  group 
of  oppressed  peasantries  whose  high  birth- 
rate helps  to  keep  them  in  bondage. 

The  Colonials,  of  New  Zealand  and  Aus- 
tralia, are  among  the  most  intellectual  and 
prosperous  people  embarked  on  the  good 
ship  Earth,  and  their  babies  scarcely  suffice 
to  keep  their  numbers  good,  though  they  have 
a  continent  to  occupy. 

After  one  of  Colonel  Roosevelt's  outbursts 
against  "race  suicide,"  Mr.  Dooley  observed 
that  "race  suicide,"  like  the  tariff,  is  a  local 
question.  They  might  be  troubled  by  it  on 
the  Lake  Shore  Drive,  but  it  was  the  least  of 
their  worries  on  the  Archey  Road.  So  it  is 
all  over  the  world.  The  poor  and  the  unedu- 

(142 


PASSENGERS  THAT  MULTIPLY 

cated  multiply.  The  well-to-do  and  the  in- 
tellectual do  not.  China  and  Russia,  French 
Canada  and  Japan  are  the  Archey  Roads  of 
the  world.  Australia,  Great  Britain,  France, 
the  United  States  and  the  nations  of  Europe 
generally  are  its  Lake  Shore  Drives.  One  of 
the  deepest  truths  in  human  thought  is  in  the 
old  saying,  "A  poor  man  for  children." 

Maud  Muller's  case  is  one  which  shows  the 
insight  of  the  poet.  In  one  couplet  Whittier 
compresses  the  whole  philosophy  of  popula- 
tion. 

"She  wedded  a  man  unlearned  and  poor, 
And  many  children  played  round  her  door." 

This  is  more  comprehensive  than  the  maxim 
"A  poor  man  for  children;"  for  small  fam- 
ilies are  the  rule  in  many  communities  among 
the  poor  as  well  as  the  rich.  But  where  the 
people  are  both  ignorant — or  "unlearned"- 
and  poor,  large  families  abound.  The  Boers 
are  well-to-do,  but  they  are  very  illiterate  and 
unprogressive — and  prolific.  The  French 

H3 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

Canadians  are  not  poor  in  the  slum  sense,  per- 
haps, but  they  are  not  strivers  after  wealth  as  a 
race,  still  maintaining  the  happy-go-lucky  at- 
titude toward  the  rearing  of  children  which 
we  Yankees  maintained  when  we  had,  as  they 
have,  a  wilderness  at  our  doors  in  which  we 
might  freely  live.  They  are  illiterate,  and 
very  prolific.  The  Russians  and  the  Central 
European  peasantry  generally,  are  both  poor 
and  ignorant. 

The  rule  is  this.  The  simple  life  produces 
large  families.  The  complex  life  cuts  down 
the  birth-rate.  As  the  good  ship  Earth  "spins 
down  the  ringing  grooves  of  change",  if  hu- 
man beings  are  not  to  make  their  lives  on 
her  decks  a  hell  through  the  miseries  of  pov- 
erty, they  must  live  more  and  more  the  com- 
plex life,  and  less  and  less  the  simple  life. 
This  is  the  solution  of  the  riddle  of  popula- 
tion. 

There  must  be  no  poverty.  Some  way  must 
be  found  to  eliminate  the  injustices  which 
make  the  inequalities  that  doom  so  many  mil- 
lions, even  in  our  sparsely  peopled  land,  to  lives 

144 


PASSENGERS  THAT  MULTIPLY 

of  simple,  stark,  dead  struggle  for  existence. 
Such  a  state  of  freedom  from  poverty  is  pos- 
sible in  the  western  world  for  ages  to  come, 
and  if  attained  before  the  people  are  ground 
down  into  "the  simple  life"  will  forever  save 
us  from  a  swarming  existence  of  poverty  from 
which,  once  completely  plunged  into  it,  we 
shall  have  no  way  of  escaping — fulfilling  the 
sordid  law  of  Malthus,  and  carrying  us  down 
into  that  "amorphous  gulf,"  "that  gulf  of  an- 
archy whose  pit  is  hell."  There  must  be  a 
way  found  through  which  all  men  may  escape 
from  poverty. 

The  case  of  the  simple  life  vs.  the  complex 
life  is  another  way  of  stating  the  old 
struggle  which  Spencer  describes  of  individ- 
uation  vs.  genesis.  The  complete,  perfect 
and  complex  individual  does  not  multiply  as 
does  the  simple,  small  and  limited  individual. 
The  house-fly  is  credited  with  the  power  to 
produce  199,000,000,000,000,000  of  young  in 
a  season,  if  all  her  eggs  hatch,  and  all  her 
young  go  "unswatted."  The  very  fact  of  size 
carries  with  it  the  gift  of  more  complex  life. 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

The  elephant  is  committed  by  his  very 
weight  to  a  struggle  with  gravity — he  can  not 
carry  about  such  a  body  and  keep  it  nourished, 
and  still  have  left  the  vital  force  to  multiply 
like  the  house-fly.  So  the  birth-rate  of  the 
elephant  is  low  and  that  of  the  house-fly  high, 
just  as  one  lives  on  a  high  plane,  and  the  other 
on  a  low  one. 

Small  birds  breed  faster  than  large  ones  of 
the  same  genus.  The  golden  eagle  has  fewer 
young  than  does  the  sparrow  hawk.  The  tapir 
is  a  slow  breeder,  while  the  peccary  swarms. 
These  things  are  not  accidental.  They  inhere 
in  the  principles  of  biology.  Organisms  are 
restricted  in  producing  progeny  as  soon  as  they 
begin  to  do  anything  else. 

But  no  merely  brute  life  compares  in  its 
capacity  for  becoming  complex  with  human 
life.  The  bushman  lives  a  simple  life  for  a 
man,  but  the  gorilla  reduces  existence  to  still 
lower  terms. 

Let  us  contrast  the  simple  life  of  the  Chi- 
nese peasant  with  that  of  a  struggling  Ameri- 
can family.  The  American  boy  goes  to  school, 

1146 


PASSENGERS  THAT  MULTIPLY 

the  Chinese  boy  works — bowed  down  to  serve 
the  rice.  The  American  boy  goes  to  high 
school ;  the  Chinese  boy  at  the  same  age  takes 
a  wife,  and  becomes  a  father.  He  is  repeated- 
ly becoming  a  father,  while  the  American 
boy  goes  to  college,  or  spends  years  becoming 
"able  to  marry."  Out  of  a  thousand  American 
boys  a  great  many  will  take  up  studies  or  ap- 
prenticeships or  other  complexities  of  life 
which  will  defer  their  marriages — and  if  they 
do  not  their  sweethearts  will.  Nothing  of  the 
sort  in  China  in  one  case  in  a  hundred  thou- 
sand. 

The  difference  between  Gladys  and  Tzi  is 
even  greater.  Tzi  has  her  feet  bound  and 
suffers  the  tortures  of  hell  for  years,  and  this 
is  the  only  complexity  entering  into  her  life. 
At  last  it  only  makes  life  simpler  and  con- 
fines her  more  closely  to  her  sole  business  of 
motherhood  as  it  keeps  her  vegetating  in  the 
hovel  she  calls  home.  At  thirteen  she  is  given 
in  marriage,  and  while  Gladys  is  working 
through  the  grades  at  school,  Tzi  is  having 
babies.  If  her  husband  is  able  he  hires  a  wet 

H7 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

nurse  for  the  babies,  so  that  Tzi  may  become 
a  mother  of  tener. 

Tzi  and  Ching  marry  in  their  early  teens ; 
Willie  and  Gladys  wait — and  in  waiting  may- 
be change  their  minds.  Tzi  and  Ching,  liv- 
ing the  simple  life,  couch  in  a  hovel  with  their 
parents  and  relatives ;  Willie  and  Gladys  must 
have  a  home  of  their  own.  Gladys's  mother 
insists  that  her  daughter  "shall  have  a  few 
years  of  just  being  a  girl ;"  the  mother  of  Tzi 
hands  her  over  to  the  father  of  Tzi  to  give 
away  to  a  husband  who  has  never  seen  Tzi's 
face. 

And  when  Willie  and  Gladys  marry,  they 
have  their  social  work,  their  church  work,  and 
their  clubs  and  societies  to  take  care  of;  but 
Tzi  and  Ching  have  babies  only — babies  and 
awful  grinding  work.  Willie  and  Gladys 
must  have  a  piano;  Tzi  and  Ching  have 
babies.  Willie  and  Gladys  must  have  rugs  and 
bathrooms  and  a  bungalow  at  some  lake.  Tzi 
and  Ching  know  nothing  but  work  and  babies. 
Willie  and  Gladys  want  to  know  something 
about  this  great  universe  of  ours,  they  reach 

148 


PASSENGERS  THAT  MULTIPLY 

out  after  the  stars,  they  delve  into  the  myster- 
ies of  knowledge;  but  as  for  Tzi  and  Ching, 

"Slaves  of  the  wheel  of  labor,  what  to  them 
Are  Plato  and  the  swing  of  Pleiades? 
What  the  long  reaches  of  the  peaks  of  song, 
The  rift  of  dawn,  the  reddening  of  the  rose?" 

Ross  says  of  Tzi  and  Ching's  country, 
stripped  to  the  bare  machinery  of  production 
as  it  is:  "The  founts  of  inspiration  and  poetry 
dry  up,  and  life  sinks  to  a  dull  sordid  round 
of  food-getting  and  begetting." 

And  again,  these  variations  are  not  acci- 
dental. Here  also  they  inhere  in  the  very 
principles  of  biology.  All  the  things  done  by 
Willie  and  Gladys  in  addition  to  the  simple 
labors  of  Ching  and  Tzi  take  time  and  vital 
force.  Human  beings,  like  animals,  but  to  a 
degree  infinitely  greater,  are  inhibited  from 
multiplying  to  the  exact  extent,  on  the  aver- 
age, to  which  they  exercise  their  powers  to  do 
anything  else.  This  must  be  so.  It  is  possible 
for  a  horse  to  trot  a  mile  in  just  a  little  more 
than  two  minutes.  It  is  possible  for  the  same 
horse  to  draw  a  ton.  But  it  is  not  possible  for 

149 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

the  same  horse  to  do  the  two  things  at  the 
same  time. 

Jesus  came  to  earth  that  we  might  have  life, 
and  that  more  abundantly.  This  must  mean  a 
more  complex  life,  more  needs,  more  grati- 
fications, more  desires.  Like  the  daughters 
of  the  horse  leech  we  cry,  "Give,  give!"  to  na- 
ture and  to  life.  And  this  is  right.  Give  us 
a  more  complex  life,  not  a  simpler  one;  bet- 
ter children,  even  though  they  be  fewer;  and 
women  with  unbound  feet,  unbound  minds, 
with  freedom  to  develop  in  every  way  a  free- 
dom and  development  which  will  make  their 
children  great,  whether  they  be  many  or  not. 
Thus  will  the  ship  be  saved  from  over-peo- 
pling. 

This  is  the  application  to  political  econ- 
omy of  the  universal  law  of  the  conflict  be- 
tween individuation  and  genesis.  It  recon- 
ciles the  law  of  evolution  with  the  law  of 
justice,  and  transforms  the  evolutionary  prin- 
ciple from  a  sentence  of  social  death  to  a  gos- 
pel, like  that  of  the  Nazarene,  of  "good  tid- 
ings to  the  poor".  It  recognizes  the  truth  in 

150 


PASSENGERS  THAT  MULTIPLY 

the  doctrines  of  those  who  have  preached  di- 
minishing returns,  redundancy  of  population, 
the  struggle  for  existence,  and  the  survival  of 
the  fittest,  as  reasons  for  poverty.     It  takes 
cognizance  of  the  truth  in  those  other  writings 
which  assure  us  that  there  is  something  in 
man's  mentality  which  takes  him  out  of  the 
operation  of  the  Iron  Statute  of  the  universal 
tendency  of  all  living  things  to  out-multiply 
their  means  of  living.     It  identifies  that  re- 
demptive Something.     It  shows  that  in  this 
respect,  as  in  all  others,  man  must  work  out 
his  own  salvation.    He  was  naked,  and  clothed 
himself.     He  was  shelterless,  and  he  learned 
to  build.     He  taught  the  beasts  to  give  their 
increase  for  his  food,  the  fields  to  bring  forth 
for  him.    In  all  these  cases  man  finds  himself 
within  some  saving  natural  law  as  soon  as  he 
rises  to  its  level.    This  principle  of  the  con- 
flict between  individuation  and  genesis  takes 
him  out  of  the  operation  of  the  law  of  fecun- 
dity, as  soon  as  he  rises  to  the  moral  and  intel- 
lectual heights  to  which,  unless  by  his  own 
sociological  failure  his  development  is  frus- 

15* 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

trated,  he  is  destined.  He  rises  above  this  law, 
not  alone  by  any  Malthusian  "prudential"  or 
"preventive"  check  on  population ;  but  by  the 
force  of  natural  law  which  works  in  plant  and 
beast  as  well  as  in  man.  In  the  process  of 
evolution,  man  steps  upon  the  stage  a  savage, 
but  with  the  complex  life  which  half  solves 
the  great  riddle.  In  civilized  man,  under  con- 
ditions of  justice,  freedom  and  enlightenment, 
the  law  of  multiplication  gives  way  to  the  law 
of  complex,  full,  manifold  and  absorbing  life. 
Redundancy  of  offspring  is  supplanted  by  re- 
dundancy of  life. 

"Know  ye  not,  brethren,  (for  I  speak  to 
them  that  know  the  law,)  how  that  the  law 
hath  dominion  over  a  man  as  long  as  he  liveth? 
.  .  .  But  now  we  are  delivered  from  the 
law,  that  being  dead  wherein  we  were  held; 
that  we  should  serve  in  newness  of  spirit,  and 
not  in  the  oldness  of  the  letter." 


CHAPTER  XII 

SEVEN  PERILS  OF   HUMANITY — NUMBER  ONE. 
THE   MOHAMMEDAN   PERIL 

AS  passengers  on  a  ship  which  has  no 
ports  of  call,  the  cliques,  cabals,  classes 
and  divisions  among  the  people  aboard  must 
be  important.  It  was  always  so.  For  even  in 
the  days  of  old,  the  rise  of  a  new  dynasty  in 
Asia  filled  the  nations  of  Europe  with  fire 
and  sword,  by  the  mere  ebb  and  flow  of  bat- 
tle across  the  decks. 

But  now,  we  have  learned  to  go  to  the  re- 
motest^parts  of  the  planet  in  vessels,  each  of 
which  will  carry  an  army;  and  we  have  sup- 
plemented the  horse  and  camel  with  the  train, 
the  motor-car  and  the  aeroplane.  We  have 
learned  to  go  to  other  peoples  in  such  wise — 
but  we  often  forget  that  they  also  have  learned 
to  come  to  us.  The  good  ship  Earth  can  not 
be  ever  again  the  planet  in  which  nations  can 

153 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

live  isolated  lives.  We  are  all  in  the  same 
boat — and  more  and  more  we  are  driven  to 
look  upon  the  huge  problem  of  life  upon  it 
as  a  single  problem. 

When  one  reads  the  story  of  sea  adventure, 
he  finds  his  first  thrill  in  the  description  of 
the  swarthy  nondescript  crew  of  Lascars,  Ma- 
lays, Kanakas  and  Portuguese.  No  matter  how 
fair  the  skies  or  how  favorable  the  breeze, 
the  reader  is  aware  that  in  another  part  of  the 
ship  lurks  that  crew,  with  knives  in  their 
belts  and  murder  and  mutiny  in  their  hearts. 
But  how  about  the  swarthy  crew  on  other  parts 
of  the  decks  of  the  good  ship  Earth?  Are 
affairs  on  this  spinning  Zeppelin  on  which  we 
sail  perfectly  free  from  danger  from  them? 

There  are  several  questionable  cliques  of 
sinister  aspect  on  board  with  us,  and  of  these 
I  shall  now  speak  of  one — the  Mohammedan 
peril. 

We  who  are  at  least  nominally  Christians, 
are  prone  to  think  that  the  religion  founded  by 
Mahomet  1,300  years  ago  is  a  dying  or  de- 
cadent one.  No  mistake  was  ever  more  egre- 

154 


THE    MOHAMMEDAN    PERIL 

gious.  Mohammedanism  is  making  three 
converts  to  Christianity's  one! 

It  is  growing  in  Russia,  where  the  alliance 
of  the  decadent  absolutism  of  the  czar  with 
the  dying  Greek  Catholic  church  leaves  the 
field  free  for  the  missionaries  of  Islam.  It 
is  sweeping  over  Central  Asia  like  an  infec- 
tion. It  is  spreading  through  the  islands  of 
the  Pacific,  where  it  already  is  the  ruling  re- 
ligion in  Sumatra,  Java,  Celebes,  Borneo  and 
some  of  our  Philippines.  It  is  wiping  out 
paganism  in  Africa,  where  it  seems  bound  to 
become  the  universal  faith  of  the  black  race. 
It  is  conquering  Abyssinia,  that  kingdom  of 
blacks  in  which  Christianity  of  a  mongrel  sort 
has  fought  back  Islam  for  a  thousand  years. 

Mohammedanism  makes  fighters  of  its  con- 
verts. Its  weakness  and  its  strength  lie  in 
this  fact.  Italy  can  not  conquer  the  Trip- 
olitanians.  She  may  finally  kill  them,  but  she 
can  not  make  them  submit. 

Mohammedanism  unites  all  the  races  of  the 
faith  in  one  brotherhood.  Freemasons  and 
knights  of  various  orders  take  oaths  of  mutual 

1 55 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

aid  but  none  of  them  clings  to  one  another  as 
do  Mohammedans.  Russia  in  Central  Asia, 
England  in  Egypt  and  India,  France  in  Tunis, 
and  Spain  in  Morocco  were  all  disturbed  by 
the  rage  of  Mohammedans  against  Christians 
when  Italy  attacked  Tripoli. 

The  Mohammedan  nations  of  the  world 
possess  1,500,000  trained  soldiers,  armed  with 
modern  weapons.  There  are  perhaps  ten  mil- 
lions of  first-class  fighting  men,  fierce,  brave 
as  any  men  in  the  world,  but  untrained,  who 
are  ready  to  die  happily  in  the  cause  of  Islam 
against  the  hated  unbelievers. 

Mohammedanism  is  a  religion  of  sex-indul- 
gence, of  temperance,  of  hate  against  all  other 
faiths,  and  is  based  on  the  principle  that  it  is 
right  to  kill  those  who  refuse  to  accept  the  true 
religion  as  they  fanatically  believe  theirs  to 
be.  Such  a  faith  so  held  is  a  world-wide 
portent. 

This  faith  is  as  strong  now  as  ever  it  was. 
As  strong  as  when  the  Mohammedans  con- 
quered Spain,  and  were  kept  from  making  us 
all  Mohammedans  by  nothing  but  the  tre- 

156 


THE    MOHAMMEDAN    PERIL 

mendous  genius  in  battle  of  Charles  the  Ham- 
mer, grandfather  of  Charlemagne,  who  beat 
them  back  in  a  seven  days'  battle  at  Tours,  in 
which  the  Mohammedans  left  375,000  dead 
on  the  field.  They  had  already  conquered  all 
of  Spain  and  half  of  France.  This  was  twelve 
hundred  years  ago. 

From  that  time,  the  Moslems  were  held 
back  at  the  Pyrenees,  and  were  finally  ex- 
pelled from  Spain;  but  all  the  time  they  were 
fiercely  beating  at  the  other  door  of  Europe. 
They  wiped  out  the  last  vestige  of  the  Byzan- 
tine Empire,  which  held  them  in  check  for 
more  than  a  thousand  years.  From  this  we 
should  learn  that  Mohammedanism  never 
quits.  Nine  hundred  years  after  Charles  the 
Hammer  broke  them  to  pieces  at  Tours,  John 
Sobieski,  of  Poland,  and  Prince  Eugene,  of 
Savoy — who  fought  beside  Marlborough,  of 
England,  at  Blenheim — saved  Christendom  a 
second  time,  by  victories  in  a  series  of  terrible 
battles  in  what  is  now  the  Christian  empire  of 
Austria. 

When  one  of  the  Moorish  officers  in  Spain 

157 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

kept  for  himself  a  beautiful  maiden,  Abder- 
Rahman  his  general  put  him  to  death  for 
keeping  a  treasure  which  should  have  gone  to 
the  caliph — the  head  of  the  church.  And 
when  the  Mohammedans  took  Spain,  thirty 
thousand  fair  women  were  sent  as  a  present  to 
the  caliph.  The  Turks  of  to-day  are  the  same 
as  those  who  stormed  Constantinople  in  1453. 
Their  war  on  the  Albanians  just  prior  to  the 
attack  on  Turkey  by  the  Balkan  Allies  was 
the  same  fierce  Mohammedan  war.  Still  girls 
are  the  reward  of  valor.  The  Circassian  maid- 
ens of  1912  find  their  market  in  the  harems  of 
Islam. 

Only  one  thing  keeps  the  Mohammedans 
from  resuming  their  march  to  conquer  the 
world  for  Islam.  Not  lack  of  numbers — there 
are  220,000,000  of  them,  the  best  soldiery  of 
the  world.  No,  it  is  lack  of  money  and  scien- 
tific knowledge.  Time  was  when  the  Arabs 
were  the  best  educated  people  in  the  world, 
and  the  Mohammedan  court  in  Spain  was  for 
three  hundred  years  the  center  of  science, 
wealth  and  culture.  The  great  world  danger:. 

" 


THE    MOHAMMEDAN    PERIL 
jn^Mohammedanism  is  that  some 


these     enl^  who  WJll_b_e_StQW  on 


them  knQwledg£J3J_lhe^cie&rpg  and  finann'al 

honesty  and  ability  again.  If  that  time  comes 
before  Mohammedan  fanaticism  is  weakened 
by  general  and  liberal  education,  we  shall 
need  all  the  Charles  Martels,  all  the  John 
Sobieskies,  and  all  the  Prince  Eugenes  which 
the  rest  of  the  world  can  muster,  to  keep  the 
good  ship  Earth  from  passing  under  the 
blight  of  the  most  seductive  and  the  most  de- 
grading superstition  on  earth  —  a  faith  which 
enslaves  woman,  flouts  democracy,  and  know- 
ing nothing  of  rights,  bows  to  power  alone. 

Just  now  the  Crescent  seems  to  be  waning 
more  pronouncedly  than  for  centuries.  The 
Balkan  Allies  have  won  a  brilliant  victory, 
and  as  this  is  written,  Janina  has  fallen  to  the 
prowess  of  the  Greeks,  and  Adrianople  seems 
on  the  very  point  of  surrendering  to  the  Bui- 
gars.  The  Turk  seems  crowded  almost  off  the 
map  of  Europe. 

But  the  Turk  is  not  Islam.  His  headship 
has  not  been  for  a  hundred  and  fifty  years  a 

159 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

good  thing  for  Islam.  The  decay  of  Turkey 
does  not  mean  that  the  Mohammedan  peril  is 
a  thing  of  the  past.  Nine  hundred  years 
elapsed  between  the  defeat  of  the  Moors  at 
Tours  and  the  victories  of  the  armies  of  Eu- 
rope over  the  Turks  at  Vienna.  During  those 
nine  centuries  the  Moors  had  been  expelled 
from  Spain  and  driven  across  the  Strait  of 
Gibraltar,  as  the  Turks  may  soon  be  expelled 
from  the  Balkan  Peninsula  and  driven  across 
the  Bosphorus.  But  Islam  still  lived.  There 
may  now  be  living  in  some  Bedouin  tent,  or 
some  Afghan  village,  on  the  steppes  of  Russia 
or  Siberia,  in  some  city  of  Hindustan  or  in  an 
African  hut  the  man  whose  son  will  ride  the 
wave  of  resurgent  Mohammedanism.  Or  if 
not  his  son,  his  grandson,  his  great-grandson, 
or  his  descendant  a  hundred  times  removed. 
The  world  of  the  Crescent  is  wide,  and  its  cav- 
erns and  penetralia  very,  very  deep.  Out  of 
them  almost  anything  may  come  at  any  time. 
Out  of  them,  instead  of  mad  mullahs,  veiled 
prophets,  and  beaters  of  tom-toms,  Genius 
will  assuredly  come  sometime.  It  may  be  the 

160 


THE    MOHAMMEDAN    PERIL 

genius  of  civilization,  or  the  genius  of  con- 
quest and  slaughter.  That  it  is  so  likely  to  be 
the  latter  is  what  makes  the  Mohammedan 
peril  a  real  one. 

The  triumph  of  science  in  the  Christian 
world  was  the  destruction  of  superstition.  Let 
us  hope  that  the  Mohammedan  world  may  be 
disenthralled  and  enlightened  by  the  same 
process. 


CHAPTER  XIII 

SEVEN  PERILS  OF  HUMANITY — NUMBER  TWO. 
THE  SPANISH-PORTUGUESE  PERIL 

INSTEAD  of  the  good  ship  Earth,  let  us 
suppose  it  were  only  our  associations  on 
the  Mauretama  or  the  Olympic  of  which  we 
have  to  think.  We  sail  on,  first-cabin,  second- 
cabin  and  saloon  passengers  getting  along 
finely.  None  of  them  thinks  of  the  massed 
steerage  passengers,  for  their  condition  is  of 
no  consequence.  They  are  cut  off  from  the 
rest  of  us.  We  are  in  another  world. 

But  suppose  the  decks  of  the  great  ship 
should  suddenly  become  permeable,  so  that 
saloon,  cabin — first  and  second — and  steerage 
no  longer  kept  their  classes  separate?  We 
should  all  at  once  realize  that  it  is  a  matter 
of  the  utmost  moment  what  sort  of  people  are 
in  the  steerage. 

Great  Britain  and  Ireland,  France  and  Ger- 
162 


THE  SPANISH  PERIL 

many,  Austria,  Switzerland,  and  the  Low 
Countries,  Canada,  the  United  States,  Aus- 
tralia, and  New  Zealand,  and  British  South 
Africa  are  the  saloon,  and  first  and  second  cab- 
ins of  the  good  ship  Earth.  There  are  found 
on  the  average  and  among  the  masses  of  the 
people  the  maximum  of  intellect,  luxury  and 
comfort,  and  the  minimum  of  poverty— 
though  enough  of  that  is  found  everywhere 
in  all  conscience.  The  steerage  passengers 
surge  like  a  sea  all  about  these  select-club  na- 
tions. Just  now  we  spoke  of  the  Moham- 
medans— 220,000,000  of  them,  who  occupy 
the  mountains  and  deserts  from  which  they 
may  one  day  descend  and  emerge,  following 
the  green  flag  of  Islam  in  holy  wars  that  shall 
shake  the  world  again. 

Let  us  now  consider  another  danger  to 
humanity — one  scarcely  recognized  with  any 
concreteness — the  Spanish-Portuguese  factor 
among  the  steerage  passengers  in  the  good 
ship  Earth. 

The  Spanish  and  Portuguese  at  their  best 
are  among  the  finest  of  races.  They  are  brave, 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

poetic,  hardy,  industrious  and  efficient.  But 
for  some  reason,  they  have  never  learned  the 
lesson  of  justice  and  democracy.  They  do  not 
know  how  to  govern,  to  educate,  to  dwell  to- 
gether on  terms  of  equity.  They  do  not  know 
how  to  establish  liberty  of  the  press  or  of 
speech.  They  have  not  the  gift  of  kindly 
feeling  and  mercy  to  the  lowly  or  to  beasts. 
They  are  the  most  rapacious  landlords,  and 
the  cruelest  slave-drivers  in  the  world. 

And  because  they  were  bold  soldiers  and 
magnificent  sailors  and  fighters  four  hundred 
years  ago,  they  now  have  possession  of  the 
best  portions  of  the  good  ship  Earth.  I  shall 
say  nothing  of  Spanish  North  Africa,  or  of  the 
Spain-dominated  Philippines,  or  Guam,  or 
Portuguese  empires  in  Africa,  but  shall  con- 
sider only  the  wonderful  and  sinister  manner 
in  which  the  evils  of  four  hundred  years  ago 
live  yet  in  the  Spanish-Portuguese  control  of 
America. 

Sixty-five  millions  of  people  in  the  new 
world  live  under  Spanish  and  Portuguese 
republics.  But  their  numbers  are  small,  com- 

164 


THE  SPANISH  PERIL 

pared  with  what  they  monopolize.  From  the 
Rio  Grande  south  as  far  as  the  world  extends  it 
is  all  theirs.  They  hold  sway  over  nearly  9,000,- 
ooo  square  miles  of  the  Americas — more  than 
a  sixth  of  the  land  surface  of  the  world.  They 
possess  half  a  dozen  Californias,  and  at  least 
three  Mississippi  valleys.  In  their  moun- 
tain regions  are  Utahs  and  Colorados 
almost  unnumbered.  Two-thirds  of  the 
western  hemisphere  are  theirs  as  against  one- 
third  owned  by  the  English-speaking  peoples, 
and  these  two-thirds  comprise  not  less  than 
three-fourths  of  the  richness,  the  capacity  to 
support  population  of  the  western  world. 

Brazil  is  Portuguese,  and  all  the  rest 
Spanish.  But  in  the  danger  that  lies  in  these 
peoples  for  the  welfare  of  the  good  ship 
Earth,  there  is  nothing  to  choose  between 
these  two  branches  of  the  Iberian  tree. 

In  all  these  great  nations  the  common  peo- 
ple are  debauched  in  superstition  and  crushed 
by  tyranny.  Cruel  sports  and  cruel  customs 
hold  them  down  to  the  level  of  beasts  as  far 
as  such  things  can  do  so.  In  Mexico,  while 

165 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

families  average  five  or  six  children,  the  in- 
fant death-rate  is  fifty  per  cent.  So  population 
grows  slowly,  if  at  all.  The  people  neglect 
their  children  and  live  insanitary  lives.  They 
are  slaves  through  peonage.  With  Diaz,  or 
Madero,  or  Orozco,  it  is  all  the  same  with 
them. 

In  Central  America  the  birth-rate  is  high 
and  population  increases  with  great  rapidity 
— between  wars.  But  the  people  are  ignorant 
and  enslaved.  Through  all  South  America — 
a  continent  so  huge  and  so  wonderful  in 
capacity  for  supporting  population  that  the 
imagination  fails  to  measure  it — the  story  is 
the  same. 

Everywhere  Spanish  and  Portuguese  me- 
dieval ideals  rule.  The  lands  are  monopolized 
by  landlords,  some  of  whom  own  millions  of 
acres.  The  common  people  are  peonized  and 
ground  down.  In  rich,  rich  Paraguay,  while 
the  common  people  are  rather  free  from  pov- 
erty, the  grossest  ignorance  and  superstition 
prevail.  In  Chili  the  death-rate  among  in- 

166 


THE  SPANISH  PERIL 

fants  is  seventy-six  per  cent.  In  Bolivia  the 
devils  of  cruelty  and  greed  seem  loosed.  Not 
even  in  more  sophisticated  Argentina  and 
Brazil  do  we  find  conditions  much  better. 
The  whole  of  this  great  part  of  the  good 
ship  Earth  is  given  over  to  land  monopoly, 
peonage,  ignorance  and  immorality.  The 
percentage  of  illegitimate  births  in  all  these 
nations  runs  from  twenty  per  cent,  to  fifty  per 
cent. 

It  is  not  necessary  to  say  that  this  indict- 
ment can  not  be  made  to  lie  against  all  the 
people  of  these  nations.  Here,  as  everywhere, 
there  are  many  who  stand  for  the  highest 
ideals,  and  live  lives  of  purity,  altruism  and 
idealism.  And  even  in  their  faults,  we  of  the 
less  backward  races  have  no  right  to  look  down 
on  them;  for  they  stand  in  the  place  we  occu- 
'pied  not  so  very  long  ago;  and  among  us  are 
millions  who  now  rank  with  their  lowest.  But 
the  depressing  thing  about  them  is  that  the 
forces  of  evil  and  oppression  seem  to  be  in 
almost  undisputed  control,  and  the  justifica- 

167 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

tion  for  any  optimistic  forecast  for  them  is  not 
apparent. 

There  is  a  world  peril  in  this.  The  other 
passengers  will  need  to  move  into  these  fertile 
wastes  one  day  and  will  find  them  "owned"  by 
such  influences  as  I  have  described.  What 
will  happen  then?  No  one  can  prophesy — 
certainly  no  one  can  prophesy  peace. 

The  passing  of  a  part  of  the  Earth  into 
such  hands  is  a  dreadful  thing.  It  would  have 
been  far  better  had  the  lands  now  occupied 
by  the  Spanish  and  Portuguese  republics  been 
left  in  the  hands  of  their  Indian  aborigines 
until  now.  The  worst  thing  that  could  happen 
would  be  for  these  peoples  to  obtain  scientific 
education  and  fail  to  gain  democracy.  For 
with  sanitation  and  modern  medical  practise 
their  birth-rate  would  fill  up  the  land  in  a  few 
centuries  with  a  race  of  slaves  as  dense  in 
population  as  are  the  Chinese,  and  with  war- 
like blood  in  their  veins  which  might  make 
them  the  war-lords  of  the  world. 

Let  us  hope  that  these  oppressed  peoples 
168 


THE  SPANISH  PERIL 

may  gain  the  reality,  of  which  they  all  have 
the  shadow — real  democracy,  and  with  it 
emancipation  from  landlords,  from  supersti- 
tion, from  ignorance.  Until  they  do  this  the 
rest  of  the  passengers  must  look  askance  at  the 
Portuguese  and  Spanish  Americans. 


CHAPTER  XIV 

SEVEN  PERILS  OF  HUMANITY— NUMBER  THREE. 
THE  RUSSIAN  PERIL 

CRATCH  a  Russian,"  says  an  old  adage, 

and  you  find  a  Tartar." 
This  is  true  in  many  senses.  The  Russian 
is  more  Asiatic  than  European.  Russian 
writers — among  them  Tolstoy — were  until 
recently  in  the  habit  of  speaking  of  Russia  as 
non-European.  And  though  the  Slavic  race 
seems  to  have  been  in  Europe  as  long  as  has 
the  German,  it  has  always  been  in  close  contact 
with  Asia.  It  was  overrun  by  the  Mongols 
and  Tartars.  Its  princes  once  were  khans. 
And  when  the  Russian  czardom  was  built  up 
by  the  Ivans  and  Bazil,  beginning  about  four 
hundred  years  ago,  the  princes  of  Muscovy 
saddled  on  the  humble  and  docile  Slav  peas- 
antry, a  tyranny  with  the  unbridled  power  and 
barbaric  splendor  of  the  Tartar  court  they  had 

170 


THE  RUSSIAN  PERIL 

displaced,  combined  with  the  pomp  and  dis- 
play of  the  Eastern  Roman  Empire,  then  re- 
cently overthrown  by  the  Turks. 

I  put  down  Russia  as  the  third  of  the  Seven 
Perils  of  Humanity.  As  a  passenger  on  the 
good  ship  Earth,  whose  posterity  must  in- 
habit the  same  whirling  ball  with  the  Slavs, 
I  am  not  sure  that  it  should  not  be  ranked  as 
the  hugest  peril  of  all. 

And  yet,  the  Russian  people  have  the  quali- 
ties that  may  make  of  them  our  greatest  bless- 
ing instead  of  our  greatest  curse.  Seven- 
eighths  of  them  are  farmers — no  crowded 
slums  and  fevered  city-plague  here. 

Eighty-five  per  cent,  are  of  the  peasant  class. 
And  the  question  of  their  part  in  the  future  of 
the  good  ship  Earth  lies  in  the  uncertainty  as 
to  whether  they  will  be  allowed  to  develop 
their  virtues,  or  be  utterly  debauched  by 
their  vices — for  which  they  are  not  at  all  to 
blame.  For  the  Russian  aristocracy  has  long 
since  adopted  a  systematic  and  diabolical  pol- 
icy of  both  blinding  and  debauching  the 
masses. 

171 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

The  Slav  peasant  is  democratic.  He  has 
village  communities  in  which  he  governs 
himself  in  peasant  matters,  a  good  deal  as  the 
New  Englanders  do  in  their  town  meetings. 
There  was  a  republic  in  Novgorod  which  the 
Muscovite  czars  destroyed  in  the  building  up 
of  their  Tartar  tyranny.  The  peasants  have 
a  love  for  village  life,  and  will  not  separate 
into  lonely  farms  as  we  do.  They  have  long 
known  how  to  associate  into  cooperative  bodies 
so  as  to  hire  out,  buy  and  sell  and  the  like  to 
better  advantage.  On  these  foundations  there 
is  every  reason  to  hope  that  a  great  and  bene- 
ficient  democracy  might  be  built  up,  were  it 
not  for  the  curse  of  the  czardom. 

The  Russians  are  increasing  faster  than  any 
other  race  and  they  have  more  open  ground 
over  which  to  spread. 

That  is  what  makes  them  a  world  peril. 

Fifty  years  ago  there  were  75,000,000  of 
them.  In  1897  they  had  increased  to  129,- 
000,000.  In  1904  their  numbers  had  swarmed 
to  143,000,000.  In  1906  the  central  statistical 
committee  counted  up  149,000,000.  In  1910 

172 


THE  RUSSIAN  PERIL 

the  Russian  Year  Book  sets  down  their  num- 
bers at  160,748,400! 

This  is  an  awful,  a  portentous  showing.  It 
includes,  of  course,  all  the  classes  and  all  the 
races  of  the  Russian  empire,  but  the  Slav  and 
the  fine  Finnish  races  make  up  nearly  nine  out 
of  every  ten  of  them.  At  this  rate, — and  there 
seems  to  be  no  reason  to  doubt  their  increase, 
unless  their  birth-rate  is  checked  by  enlighten- 
ment and  prosperity,  or  their  death-rate  in- 
creased by  war,  pestilence  and  famine — there 
will  be  260,000,000  Russians  in  1950;  520,- 
000,000  in  the  year  2000;  1,020,000,000  in 
2050;  and  in  the  year  2100 — with  your  chil- 
dren and  mine,  dear  reader,  on  this  great  air- 
ship Earth  to  voyage  along  with  them,  there 
will  be  2,020,000,000  Russians  or  twenty  per 
cent,  more  than  all  the  world  now  contains  in 
population. 

If  they  were  always  a  peaceful  people,  willing 
to  stay  in  one  place  and  breed  and  starve,  as  the 
Hindus,  the  Chinese  and  Koreans  do,  it  would 
be  a  different  matter.  They  would  then  in- 
crease to  the  limit  of  subsistence,  as  the  Chi- 

173 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

nese  have  done ;  and  be  swept  off  by  infant  mor- 
tality and  famine,  so  that  the  swarms  would 
remain  always  at  about  the  same  numbers. 
But  the  Russians  will  not  be  apt  to  do  this. 
They  have  under  their  sway  one-sixth  of  the 
land  surface  of  the  decks  of  our  great  air-ship. 
More  unoccupied  land  is  in  their  name  than 
any  other  people  owns.  If  the  scientists  are 
correct,  who  say  that  for  a  thousand  years  or 
more  the  carbonic  acid  gas,  accumulating  in 
the  air  through  the  burning  of  coal,  will  make 
the  climates  of  this  world  warmer  and  warmer, 
the  thawing  of  the  frigid  north  in  Russia  and 
Siberia  will  make  their  lands  the  most  desir- 
able from  the  standpoint  of  producing  a  virile 
race,  in  all  the  world.  To  me  it  seems  reason- 
able to  suppose  that  this  will  come  to  pass.  But 
no  change  in  climate  is  required.  The  lands 
now  open  to  reclamation  and  occupancy  for 
the  Slavs  are  almost  illimitable. 

What  kind  of  people  are  they?  They  are 
naturally  a  good  people.  They  have  won- 
derful musical  ability,  their  novelists  are  the 
greatest,  perhaps,  the  world  has  produced,  and 

174 


THE  RUSSIAN  PERIL 

they  are  painters,  poets  and  reformers — when 
given  a  chance. 

But  their  future  will  be  a  struggle  between 
the  good  Slav  nature  and  the  Asiatic,  the 
Tartar  influences  that  govern  them.  The  peas- 
ants are  starving — and,  of  course,  multiplying. 
People  as  poor  as  they  never  are  guilty  of 
"race  suicide."  They  live  "the  simple  life." 

The  emancipation  of  the  serfs  only  plunged 
them  into  deeper  bondage  to  the  landlord 
through  interest  on  their  allotments  of  lands. 
This  so-called  emancipation  was  the  most 
awful  piece  of  robbery  ever  committed.  Half 
the  land  "belongs"  to  the  royal  family.  The 
peasants  have  not  one-tenth  as  much  as  they 
need  for  their  support.  They  are  leaving 
their  villages  by  millions  to  wander  about  as 
tramps  in  search  of  work  and  food.  They  arc 
denied  education.  Good  men  and  women 
who  try  to  teach  them  are  sent  to  Siberia  or 
scourged  by  the  police.  They  are  systemat- 
ically debauched  by  drink.  The  government, 
not  so  civilized  as  that  of  China,  which  is  put- 
ting down  the  opium  trade,  is  glad  to  have  the 

175 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

peasants'  brains  benumbed  with  vodka,  lest 
they  think. 

If  these  peasants,  rising  from  this  awful 
tyranny,  can  yet  summon  up  the  resolution  to 
die  by  millions,  if  necessary,  in  order  to  throw 
off  the  czardom,  to  take  from  the  privileged 
classes  the  lands  and  distribute  them  to  the 
people,  to  make  the  state  the  universal  land- 
lord, as  Tolstoy  seems  to  suggest,  paying  the 
rent  to  the  people  themselves  in  the  form  of 
a  land-value  tax,  and  using  it  for  schools  and 
roads — if  they  can  do  this,  they  will  grow  in 
intellect,  their  birth-rate  will  fall  off,  they 
will  spread  more  slowly  over  their  wide 
domains,  and  they  may  lead  the  world  in  civ- 
ilization, in  virtue  and  in  unselfishness.  But 
Russia  is  like  a  huge  boy  who  is  wavering  be- 
tween genius  and  the  deepest  degradation — 
with  the  chances  in  favor  of  the  latter. 

If  prayers  can  avail,  prayers  should  be 
offered  up  for  the  redemption  of  Russia.  For 
unless  these  swarming  millions  are  redeemed 
the  world  may  have  an  awful  reckoning  with 


THE  RUSSIAN  PERIL 

them  one  of  these  days  when  tyranny  shall 
marshal  them  in  arms  and  drive  them  to  battle 
under  the  slogan — "The  World  for  Holy 
Russia!" 


CHAPTER  XV 

SEVEN  PERILS  OF  HUMANITY— NUMBER  FOUR. 
THE   HINDU  PERIL 

BY  the  Hindu  peril  I  mean  the  peril  that 
confronts  the  fellow  passengers  on  the 
good  ship  Earth  from  the  people  of  that 
part  of  Asia  lying  south  and  southeast  of  the 
Himalaya  Mountains.  Most  of  it  is  British 
India.  Farther  India  and  its  neighboring 
lands  belong  with  them  in  a  broad  way.  I 
call  them  the  Hindu  peril  because  the  Hindus 
are  the  most  numerous  of  them  and  the  vast 
majority  of  them  live  in  Hindustan. 

These  peoples  are  as  numerous — to  use  an 
old  simile — as  the  sands  of  the  sea,  and  they 
are  not  good  passengers  for  the  good  ship 
Earth.  Sometime  they  may  become  such,  but 
it  is  to  be  feared  that  long  before  they  cease 
to  be  a  menace  to  the  welfare  of  all  on  board 
the  problem  of  what  our  attitude  shall  be 

178 


THE  HINDU  PERIL 

toward  them  will  become  a  world  nightmare. 

Whenever  a  British  writer  begins  to  tell  of 
India  he  protests  that  it  is  not  a  nation,  but  a 
continent.  Well,  it  is  large,  but  to  American 
minds  not  amazingly  so.  Take  a  map  of  the 
United  States,  place  your  finger  at  Eastport, 
Maine,  and  follow  the  Atlantic  Coast  to  Key 
West,  Florida.  Now  follow  the  west  coast 
of  Florida  to  Pensacola,  shoot  northwest 
through  Minneapolis  and  St.  Paul  to  Prince 
Albert,  Saskatchewan.  Thence  through  the 
Canadian  wilderness,  travel  eastward  to  New- 
foundland and  down  the  coast  to  Eastport 
again,  and  you  will  have  made  about  such  a 
journey  as  would  bound  British  India. 

It  contains  1,766,000  square  miles,  while 
the  United  States  has  more  than  three  millions. 
But  while  we  have  less  than  a  hundred  mil- 
lions of  people,  British  India  has  300,000,000, 
(244,36 1, 056  in  1901). 

These  300,000,000  fellow  passengers  of  ours 
are  very  poor,  and  very  ignorant  and  unen- 
lightened. Therefore  they  multiply  rapidly. 
Wherever  there  is  found  on  the  good  ship 

179 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

Earth  a  people  which  has  a  very  high  birth- 
rate, the  masses  will  be  found  living  on  a  low 
intellectual  plane,  on  a  low  plane  of  pros- 
perity, or  both.  The  Hindus — meaning  all 
the  Indian  peoples — are  as  far  as  the  masses 
are  concerned,  not  only  poor  beyond  the  con- 
ception of  an  American,  but  they  are  plunged 
into  an  intellectual  slavery  that  is  appalling. 
Therefore  they  multiply  very  rapidly. 

In  the  absence  of  the  accepted  checks  on 
population — war,  pestilence  and  famine — and 
in  the  absence  of  the  check  which  must  come 
in  to  prevent  those  by  checking  multiplication 
— the  extirpation  of  poverty  and  the  attain- 
ment of  high  intellectual  life — the  people  of 
India  will  at  the  rate  with  which  their  popu- 
lation has  grown  since  first  it  was  computed, 
amount  in  1950  to  450,000,000;  in  A.  D.  2000 
it  will  be  675,000,000;  in  A.  D.  2050  it  will 
be  1,012,500,000;  and  in  A.  D.  2100  it  will  be 
1,518,750,000. 

There  is,  of  course,  no  room  in  their  pres- 
ent habitat  for  such  swarms.  There  are  many 
unused  natural  opportunities  in  their  coun- 

180 


THE  HINDU  PERIL 

tries.  There  are  coal,  iron,  water-power 
and  irrigable  lands;  but  even  at  the  present 
rate  of  increase  all  these  opportunities  will 
be  overtaxed  in  a  hundred  years.  The  Hindus 
are  robbed  by  taxation,  and  exploited  by  land- 
lordism and  monopoly,  but  with  a  perfect  sys- 
tem of  distribution  of  wealth,  if  such  were  to 
be  hoped  for,  multiplying  as  they  are  doing, 
poverty  would  overtake  them  through  sheer 
swarming — in  the  absence  of  the  enlighten- 
ment which  diminishes  progeny. 

For  their  increase  does  not  show  their  birth- 
rate. War  has  been  forbidden  them  by  the 
Roman  peace  of  the  British  rule.  But  still 
their  ignorance  and  squalor,  their  neglect  of 
sanitation  and  supineness  under  disease  keeps 
down  the  multiplying  hordes.  And  famine 
descends  upon  them  whenever  rain  fails  to 
come  with  the  southwest  wind  which  is  called 
a  monsoon — the  rain-bringer  for  the  Hindus. 
The  government  puts  aside  some  millions  of 
rupees  every  year  as  a  famine-insurance  fund 
to  keep  the  people  from  starving  in  years  of 
drought;  but  this  can  do  no  good.  More  peo- 

181 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

pie  will  live  over  this  famine  and  therefore 
there  will  be  more  mouths  to  feed  when  the 
next  famine  comes.  The  cause  of  famines  in 
India  is  not  drought,  but  too  many  people  and 
bad  distribution  of  wealth.  And  if  the  distri- 
bution be  remedied  the  people  will  at  once 
multiply  to  take  up  the  slack  liberated  by 
better  institutions.  The  situation  is  perfectly 
hopeless  in  the  absence  of  enlightenment  and 
the  adoption  of  sane  beliefs.  For  population 
depends  more  on  beliefs  than  on  food  and 
clothing  and  shelter. 

So,  unless  the  Hindu  myriads  can  in  some 
way  lift  themselves,  or  be  lifted  to  a  higher 
and  more  active  intellectual  life,  there  is  no 
hope  for  them.  And  we,  their  fellow  passen- 
gers on  the  good  ship  Earth,  must  not  allow 
ourselves  to  think  that  it  is  a  matter  of  no  im- 
portance to  us  that  these  teeming  millions  lie 
there,  sodden,  servile  and  squalid. 

It  is  of  importance  to  all  of  us.  It  is  of  im- 
portance in  a  thousand  ways.  For  one  thing, 
plague  festers  among  them  all  the  time  and 
now  has  found  foothold  in  California  and 

182 


THE  HINDU  PERIL 

threatens  the  United  States.  For  another,  we 
can  not  as  human  beings,  be  happy  with  these 
brethren  miserable. 

And  there  are  more  concrete  dangers.  When 
the  Mohammedan  peril  takes  form,  as  it  may 
one  day,  and  Islam  marches  forth  under  the 
green  banner  of  Mahomet,  the  caliph  of  all 
the  faithful  will  find  in  India  his  best  base 
of  operations.  Islam  lacks  mastery  of  indus- 
trial craft — the  making  of  powder,  guns,  rail- 
ways, ships,  smelting  ores,  mining  coal,  all 
the  facts  and  processes  of  science.  She  will 
find  them  in  the  62,000,000  Mussulmans  now 
in  India.  She  will  find  ports  and  cities  and  a 
•British-drilled  army.  Here  she  may  establish 
her  new  Cordova.  Her  first  blow  will  be  to 
close  the  Suez  Canal  and  seize  India. 

The  unrest  of  the  darker-colored  races  un- 
der the  domination  of  the  whites  may  play  into 
the  hands  of  such  an  irruption  of  Mussulman 
fanaticism  into  India.  Since  the  Japanese 
won  their  victory  over  Russia,  the  attitude  of 
the  browns  and  yellows  toward  us  has  changed 
— all  observers  are  agreed  as  to  that.  They 

183 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

have  always  hated  the  white  man;  but  they 
have  feared  his  seemingly  irresistible  power, 
and  respected  his  apparently  enormous  supe- 
riority over  them.  But  now  yellow  men  have 
shown  themselves  able  to  meet  one  of  the  five 
greatest  of  the  white  nations  on  .the  field  of 
battle,  and  defeat  it.  Yellow  men  have  given 
evidence  of  being  at  least  the  equal  of  white 
men  in  science,  organizing  ability,  financial 
genius  and  every  other  branch  of  the  great 
game  of  statecraft.  There  is  stirring  among 
all  the  Asiatics  and  Africans  a  feeling  which 
tends  toward  the  solidarity  of  all  of  them 
against  us.  Should  Islam  ever  reappear  in 
the  Indo-Gangetic  Plain  with  her  embattled 
hosts  marching  against  the  white  man's  armies, 
there  is  good  reason  to  believe  that  under  com- 
petent leadership  she  would  find  countless  mil- 
lions of  the  brown  men  leaning  to  her  side, 
rather  than  to  that  of  the  successors  of  Clive. 
Can  India  and  her  related  nations  ever 
emancipate  themselves  from  their  poverty  and 
benightedness?  That  question  is  the  one 
which  constitutes  the  Hindu  peril  to  humanity. 

'184 


THE  HINDU  PERIL 

I  do  not  know.  The  curse  of  these  three  hun- 
dred millions  is  caste.  Caste  means  that  the 
hundreds  of  different  classes  hate  one  another 
and  despise  one  another.  There  is  no  love  or 
sympathy  between  class  and  class.  How  could 
we  make  any  progress  toward  better  institu- 
tions if  the  preachers  loathed  and  despised 
the  doctors;  the  doctors  the  lawyers;  the  law- 
yers the  merchants;  the  carpenters  the 
masons^  and  if  to  each  the  ones  below  were  so 
unclean  that  they  could  not  eat  together,  or 
marry  together,  or  associate  in  any  way  on 
terms  of  equality?  Yet  such  is  the  caste  system 
of  India.  The  scavenger's  son  must  be  a  scav- 
enger and  marry  a  scavenger's  daughter. 
There  is  no  rising  in  the  world,  in  our  sense. 
It  is  an  awful  thing  when  to  one  occupation 
those  below  are  unclean;  but  when  Such  un- 
cleanness  is  supposed  to  inhere  in  the  flesh  of 
every  baby  born  to  it  the  belief  is  too  terrible 
for  utterance. 

Caste  keeps  the  people  from  uniting  for 
better  things.  It  keeps  them  under  the  British 
dominion.  It  makes  them  the  prey  in  all  ages 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

of  some  conqueror.  On  a  mission  in  Bombay 
is  a  sign  which  reads,  "Caste  is  our  curse,  but  ' 
Christ  is  our  salvation."  That  caste  is  their 
curse  is  true.  And  their  salvation,  if  not 
Christ,  must  be  that  democracy  for  which 
Jesus  stood,  and  which  we  nominal  Christians 
have  yet  to  put  fully  into  effect.  Until, 
through  democracy,  these  people  gain  enlight- 
enment and  general  prosperity  the  Hindu 
peril  will  always  lower  over  the  passengers  of 
this  good  ship  Earth. 


CHAPTER  XVI 

SEVEN  PERILS  OF  HUMANITY — NUMBER  FIVE. 
THE  YELLOW  PERIL 

FROM  time  to  time  the  terrors  of  the 
world  have  been  aroused  at  the  dreadful 
thought  of  the  Mongolian  race  in  arms  against 
the  rest  of  us  passengers  on  the  good  ship 
Earth.  As  the  barriers  between  nation  and 
nation  and  between  continent  and  continent 
become  worn  thin  by  science  in  eliminating 
time  and  distance  and  the  strangeness  of  peo- 
ple to  people,  this  fear  must  again  and  again 
rise  to  disturb  us  as  we  career  through  space, 
embarked  with  these  yellow  millions  on  this 
huge  air-ship  and  doomed  to  sail  with  them 
willy-nilly,  as  long  as  Earth  shall  last. 

Let  us  look  the  problem  in  the  face.  How 
many  of  them  are  there?  Chinese,  Koreans 
and  Japanese,  with  their  fringing  outposts, 
600,000,000 — a  third  of  all  us  passengers. 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

Are  they  strong  people  or  weak,  intelligent 
or  stupid,  good  passengers  or  bad?  They  are 
strong  people.  They  are  intelligent.  As  to 
whether  or  not  they  are  good  or  bad  passen- 
gers depends  on  what  the  future  shall  bring 
forth. 

In  the  main  and  as  to  their  masses  they  are 
backward  in  all  that  makes  up  a  full  and  com- 
plex human  life.  They  are  very  poor  and  if 
our  beliefs  are  correct  as  to  the  validity  of  our 
sciences  and  arts  and  literatures  as  necessary 
evidences  of  enlightenment,  and  steps  toward 
it,  they  are,  except  for  a  few  thousand  of  them, 
unenlightened. 

As  they  are  poor  and  miserable,  one  expects 
to  find  them  multiplying  with  great  rapidity 
— and  we  do  so  find  them.  They  breed  like 
rabbits.  The  four  hundred  millions  of  Chi- 
nese have  a  birth-rate  of  fifty  to  sixty  a  thou- 
sand per  annum. 

The  yellow  terror,  to  us  of  the  western 
world,  has  usually  taken  the  form  of  fear  of 
these  numberless  millions  in  arms  against  the 
white  race,  joined,  perhaps  by  the  browns  and 

188 


THE  YELLOW  PERIL 

blacks  of  India  and  Africa.  Just  now  the 
white  race  seems  to  have  convinced  itself  that 
while  the  Japanese  are  invincible  soldiers,  the 
rest  of  the  yellows  are  hopeless  from  a  military 
viewpoint.  And  with  the  belief  that  the  Chi- 
nese will  not  fight,  goes  the  conviction  that  the 
Japanese  have  lost  the  confidence  of  China, 
and  thus  have  forfeited  their  prospect  of  be- 
coming the  military  teachers  of  the  Mongolian 
race. 

Both  these  optimistic  ideas  are  fallacies. 
They  are  based  on  merely  temporary  and  sur- 
face facts.  Ten  years  hence  may  see  the  Jap- 
anese and  Chinese  cheek  by  jowl;  and  ten 
years  are  an  instant  only.  There  is  no  doubt 
that  any  power  controlling  China,  and  pos- 
sessed of  money  to  pay  soldiers,  can  recruit 
them  in  any  number  of  millions  desired  from 
the  sturdy  masses  of  the  Flowery  Republic; 
and  the  deeds  already  done  by  Chinese 
soldiers  properly  trained,  well  paid  and  ade- 
quately officered,  show  that  such  an  army  is 
quite  as  capable  of  subjugating  the  Eurasian 
continent  as  were  any  of  the  old-time  migra- 

180 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

tions  westward  from  China,  of  yellow  men  in 
arms. 

There  is  more  reason  to  fear  the  yellow  race 
in  arms  now  than  ever  before.  Japan  has  mas- 
tered our  arts  and  sciences.  China  is  on  the 
way  to  pass  through  the  same  sort  of  awaken- 
ing. This  yellow  peril,  therefore,  has  what 
the  Mohammedan  peril  lacks — knowledge  of 
the  modern  game  of  war,  finance,  science  and 
exploitation. 

But  the  military  threat  in  the  yellow  race 
is  not  its  most  fearful  portent,  daunting  as 
it  is.  Its  greatest  danger  to  the  rest  of  the 
world  lies  in  the  demands  on  the  earth's  sur- 
face by  the  yellow  men,  by  reason  of  their 
tremendous  rate  of  multiplication.  They  are 
like  a  gas  in  a  closed  vessel — enlarge  the  vessel, 
and  the  gas  fills  it  immediately.  The  Chinese 
already  are  in  a  constant  state  of  famine  from 
mere  pressure  of  population  on  the  power  of 
the  land  to  feed  it.  There  are  many  unused 
opportunities  for  supporting  population,  but 
the  moment  the  usable  land  is  increased  by  a 
square  mile  the  awful  birth-rate  will  people 

190 


THE  YELLOW  PERIL 

it  in  a  moment  of  the  nation's  life,  and  the 
case  is  as  bad  as  before.  The  case  of  Japan 
throws  light  on  this.  By  bringing  into  use  all 
lands  having  a  slope  of  less  than  fifteen 
degrees  farms  may  be  provided  to  accommo- 
date the  population  for  the  empire  until  it 
reaches  86,742,388,  instead  of  the  present 
51,742,398,  without  further  crowding.  The 
new  lands  will  not  be  so  good  as  the  old,  but 
maybe  it  will  be  possible  to  better  the  Nip- 
ponese farming  practises,  splendid  as  they  are, 
so  as  to  make  the  enlarged  area  support  as 
many  people  to  the  square  mile  as  the  present 
cultivated  area  does. 

But  by  the  time  this  land  can  be  reclaimed 
the  people  will  be  bred  to  fill  it  up.  There 
are  3.4  people  to  every  cultivated  acre  in  Japan 
now.  The  average  farm  in  Japan  is  2.6  acres 
and  supports  a  fraction  less  than  nine  people. 

This  means  that  as  long  as  their  birth-rate 
keeps  up  the  yellow  race  must  either  find  new 
lands  or  remain  miserable.  They  will  con- 
tinue to  murder  their  girl  babies.  They  will 
still  as  now  be  able  to  think  of  little  save 

191 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

food.  They  must  still  carry  the  excrement 
from  latrines,  mud  from  canal-bottoms,  forest 
leaves  from  mountain  tops  and  dung  from 
roads  to  fertilize  their  lands.  They  must  live 
lives  stooped  to  the  service  of  the  rice  and 
never  have  "the  upward  looking  and  the 
light."  And  they  must  continue  looking  out 
over  the  world  on  the  lands  of  Australia,  of 
New  Zealand,  of  California,  of  Mexico  and 
South  America,  with  longing  and  with  need — 
a  need  which  must  bring  on  wars,  perhaps  the 
greatest  the  world  has  seen,  when  they  try  to 
supply  them.  This  pressure  of  population 
on  land  is  the  real  and  portentous  yellow  peril. 
And  there  seems  little  hope  of  any  let-up  in 
the  birth-rate  for  generations  to  come.  The 
ordinary  tendency  of  poor  and  benighted  peo- 
ples to  spawn  is  intensified  by  the  beliefs  of  the 
yellows — and  beliefs  have  more  to  do  with 
birth-rates  than  does  the  Spencerian  factor  of 
plenty  of  food.  The  ancestor-worshiper 
must  have  a  son  to  offer  sacrifices  to  the  gods 
or  he  can  not  be  happy  in  the  spirit  world.  So 
he  thinks.  They  breed  here  that  they  may  not 

192 


THE  YELLOW  PERIL 

be  lost  hereafter.  So  long  as  this  pernicious 
belief  persists  we  can  be  sure  that  there  will 
be  in  the  world  a  yellow  peril — a  peril  that 
may  fill  the  seas  with  armadas,  crimson  the 
waves  with  blood  and  send  hosts  greater  than 
those  of  Attila,  to  the  very  hearts  of  Europe 
and  America.  Enlightenment  must  come  or 
danger  will  remain. 


CHAPTER  XVII 

SEVEN    PERILS   OF    HUMANITY — NUMBER    SIX. 
I  THE  BLACK  PERIL 

IN  that  darkest  stoke-hole  of  the  good  ship 
Earth,  called  Africa,  live  nearly  200,000,- 

000  of  her   1,600,000,000  passengers — about 
one-eighth  of  the  total  list.    Not  all  of  these 
belong  to  the  black  race,  but  most  of  them  do. 
And  scattered  over  the  world  are  many  mil- 
lions   more    of    negro    or    negroid    peoples. 
They   tinge   much   of   South   America  with 
black.     They  dominate  the  island  of  Hayti. 
They  are  struggling  for  the  dominion  of  Cuba. 

And  they  exist  as  a  part  of  this  great  nation 
of  ours  in  the  proportion  of  one  in  every  nine 
— or  even  a  greater  proportion.  So  many 
fellow  men  of  such  a  marked  type  would  con- 
stitute a  problem  on  any  ship — and  they  are 
a  problem  on  the  good  ship  Earth.  To  us  of 
the  United  States  they  are  so  much  of  a 

1  194 


THE  BLACK  PERIL 

problem  that  I  am  conscious  as  I  write  this 
that  many  thousands  of  negroes  will  read  these 
very  words,  and  that  what  I  shall  say  here  will 
in  one  way  or  another,  greatly  or  slightly  affect 
this  problem. 

The  black  race  constitutes,  not  only  a  world 
problem,  but  a  world  peril.  Jj^is  a  race_ol 
jstrong  people.  It  is  a  race  of  brave  people. 
It  is  a  race  capable  of  great  evil  and  great 
good.  It  is  now  rapidly  passing  under  the 
rule  of  the  Mohammedan  faith  and  because 
that  faith  is  one  of  armies  and  of  conversion 
by  the  sword,  aacLQLa  possible  holy  war,  the 
fact  that  the  negro  is  a  brave  soldier  and  prone 
to  religious  fanaticism  makes  the  black  race 
a  part  of  the  great  Mohammedan  world  pe 
In  this  the  negro  is  a  brother  to  the  Hindu./ 

But  the  negro  is  a  world  peril  because  of 
the  fact  that  he  is  a  temptation  to  other  races. 
He  has  of  all  races  the  greatest  plasticity  and 
the  least  power  of  racial  resistance  to  force. 
This  threatens  to  make  him  a  weapon  in  the 
hand  of  Islam. 

The   black    peril    consists    largely   in    the 

195 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

negro's  capacity  for  enslavement.    He  breeds 
and  flourishes  in  captivity.    Jn  the  days  nf 
slavery  he  was  the  most  submissive  of 


.chattels—  the  only_race__thf  slqypg  nf 
enriched  their  masrers.and  multiplied  in  num-  .. 
.bers  under  conditions  of  servitude. 

In  these  days  of  industrial  slavery  the  negro 
still  plays  his  ancient  role  in  slavery  which 
is  damning  to  himself  and  his  enslavers  alike. 
He  serves  in  the  Kongo  basin  in  rubber  and 
ivory.  He  slaves  in  South  Africa  in  the  mines 
and  on  the  cattle  ranches.  If  he  had  been  like 
the  gorilla  of  his  own  forests  —  incapable  of 
subjugation,  willing  to  die  rather  than  serve, 
ready  to  strike  down  his  master  with  the  first 
blade  placed  in  his  hands  as  a  tool,  a  grim 
free  fighter  to  the  last  —  it  would  have  been 
better  for  the  world.  But  the  negro  is  affec- 
tionate, yielding,  happy  even  in  slavery,  a 
good  servant,  true  to  the  interests  of  those  hav- 
ing dominion  over  him  —  and  he  has  been,  and 
is,  the  temptation  and  dl£~.TWL  Qf__thQSg_^sdia- 
have  taken  hirii_injiieir  toils. 

196 


THE  BLACK  PERIL 

The  black  peril  has  been  thought  pecul- 
iarly an  American  question,  but  it  is  not.  It 
is  a  South  African  question,  a  German  ques- 
tion, a  Belgian  question,  a  Canadian  question, 
a  world  question. 

In  the  United  States  it  has  been  our 
greatest  question  since  the  constitution  was 
adopted  recognizing  slavery  without  mention- 
ing it.  The  black  peril  made  labor  disgraceful 
in  half  of  the  United  States  and  cursed  the 
poor  whites  and  the  rich  whites.  It  was,  of 
course,  an  economic  question — slavery  and 
exploitation  always  are.  But  out  of  the  prob- 
lem of  the  competition  of  the  submissive  black 
and  the  poor  white  for  the  labor  offered  by  the 
rich  white — a  problem  as  acute  now  as  in 
1860 — grows  another  problem  and  peril — the 
darkest  phase  of  the  black  peril  to  humanity. 
This  is  the  sex  phase  of  the  problem. 

This  we  ordinarily  refuse  to  discuss  in  a 
public  way,  or  we  talk  in  generalities  against 
race  admixture,  or  we  criminally  allow  Judge 
Lynch  to  blazon  terror  to  the  negro.  The 

197 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

question  ought  to  be  discussed  in  the  open  field 
of  thought.  It  is  the  biggest  part  of  the  race 
problem. 

In  a  splendid  address  to  the  world  a  negro 
congress  once  said  in  effect  this :  "The  white 
race  through  slavery  gave  us  the  precious 
blessing  of  the  Christian  faith,  but  it  robbed 
us  of  the  virtue  of  our  women  1"  Without 
admitting  its  general  applicability,  I  accept 
this  admission  as  racially  true.  The  white 
man  does  not  believe  in  the  ability  of  the  negro 
woman  to  preserve  her  sexual  integrity  against 
him.  To  his  mind  she  is  not  strong  enough  in 
will  power.  Yet  he  fails  to  throw  about  her 
the  protection  which  other  women  receive 
who  are  of  like  weakness.  He  would  not  use 
as  a  harem  a  hospital  for  nymphomaniacs,  or 
women  of  feeble  will;  yet  he  seeks  negresses 
to  whom  his  philosophy  denies  the  will  power 
to  protect  themselves! 

Whites  where  there  is  a  negro  problem 
enact  laws  against  racial  intermarriages.  They 
do  this  in  a  struggle  to  protect  the  purity  of 

198 


THE  BLACK  PERIL 

blood  of  the  white  race.  I  believe  in  this  as 
a  great  and  splendid  struggle.  Aside  from 
any  question  of  superiority  of  one  race  over 
the  other,  I  think  that  the  mating  of  white 
and  black  is  accomplished  only  through  a 
biological  as  well  as  a  moral  shock,  which  is 
evil.  The  races  are  too  far  apart  ethnically 
to  be  crossed  with  sociological  success.  In  a 
state  of  perfect  freedom,  and  in  the  highest 
development  of  both  races  I  do  not  believe 
there  would  be  any  crossing. 

But  how  does  the  white  man  live  up  to  his 
ideal  regarding  such  unions?  William  Archer, 
the  British  writer,  says  in  effect:  "The  pres- 
ence in  the  community  of  large  numbers  of 
physically  well-developed  women  of  an  in- 
ferior race  places  an  unfair  strain  upon  the 
virtue  of  the  white  man."  But  unions  repug- 
nant to  racial  purity  should  constitute  no 
"unfair  strain."  If  white  men  believe  their 
own  talk  about  the  crime  of  miscegenation 
they  should  look  upon  it  as  they  look  upon 
incest — as  a  crime  against  the  race,  tempting 

199 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

to  the  pervert  only.  In  old  civilizations  the 
marriage  of  brothers  and  sisters  was  common. 
Then  the  presence  in  the  same  family  of  the 
sisters  may  have  been  pronounced  an  "unfair 
strain"  by  some  Egyptian  Archer.  But  with 
the  advent  of  a  better  civilization  comes  that 
finest  thing  in  the  world,  the  family  circle. 
The  temptation  has  departed,  driven  out  by 
better  ethics  and  purer  love. 

If  the  negro  woman  can  not  take  care  of  her- 
self the  white  man  is  bound  to  protect  her  as  he 
protects  other  defectives.  He  should  be  con- 
demned for  rape  if  he  sins  herein.  If  the  in- 
tegrity of  the  white  race  is  at  stake  in  the 
matter  the  white  man  who  sins  is  guilty  of  a 
crime  like  incest  and  should  be  punished  ac- 
cordingly. Let  the  white  women  of  the  lands 
of  mixed  population  demand  a  higher  ethics 
from  their  men.  Let  the  white  men  do  like- 
wise for  themselves.  To  claim  superiority  is 
not  enough — the  white  race  can  prove  supe- 
riority in  only  one  way — by  being  superior. 

The  black  peril  may  be  turned  aside  by 
economic  freedom  for  all,  by  justice  to  all,  by 

200 


THE  BLACK  PERIL 

the  taking  up  by  the  white  man  of  the  real 
white  man's  burden — that  of  really  living  up 
to  his  claims.  Until  these  things  are  done,  and 
pending  some  great  racial  uplift  in  the  negro 
race,  the  black  peril  will  hang  like  a  cloud 
over  the  broad  decks  of  the  good  ship  Earth. 


CHAPTER  XVIII 

SEVEN  PERILS  OF  HUMANITY — NUMBER  SEVEN. 
THE  WHITE  PERIL 

WHEN  rulership  begins  in  human  af- 
fairs peril  begins.  Public  servants 
come  only  with  successful  democracy,  and  are 
blessings.  But  rulers  are  always  a  peril.  The 
white  race  is  the  ruler  of  the  good  ship 
Earth  and  is  a  world  peril.  Of  all  the  seven, 
the  white  peril  is  the  greatest. 

Japan  is  the  only  nation  which  is  not  ruled 
in  ways  more  or  less  direct  by  the  white  race. 
Ushering  in  the  era  of  discovery,  the  white 
race,  finding  the  peoples  in  weakness  and  ig- 
norance, made  it  an  era  of  conquest,  exter- 
mination, enslavement  and  exploitation. 

This  has  never  ceased.  The  grabbing  of 
Tripoli  is  the  latest  of  a  horrid  catalogue  of 
which  the  conquest  of  Mexico  may  be  taken 
as  the  first.  Africa  has  been  subdued  and  en- 

202 


THE  WHITE  PERIL 

slaved.  South  America  went  to  Spain  and 
Portugal,  where  the  whites,  after  establishing 
their  prestige  in  landlordism  and  aristocracy 
cut  loose  from  Spain  and  founded  mixed- 
blood  "republics"  ruled  and  ruined  by  whites. 
Northern  Asia  and  Mongolian  Finland  and 
Lapland  have  yielded  to  Russia;  England, 
France  and  Holland  have  seized  the  South 
Seas,  Farther  India  and  Hindustan.  Britain 
took  and  peopled  North  America,  save  for 
poor  Mexico  which  crumbled  into  slavery 
under  the  Spanish  conquistadors. 

Only  in  lucky  valorous  Japan,  in  the  Ara- 
bian and  African  deserts,  and  in  mountain 
eyries  like  Nepal  and  Abyssinia  are  found  free 
nations  of  brown,  black  or  yellow  men.  The 
white  man  is  at  present  supreme. 

Our  race  accepted  in  Christianity  the  per- 
fect system  of  ethics.  It  took  the  headship  in 
intellect  when  it  unrolled  the  marvelous  book 
of  modern  science.  It  had  a  sublime  oppor- 
tunity to  uplift  the  colored  races  in  the  era 
brought  in  by  Columbus  and  Da  Gama.  At 
the  wheel  of  the  good  ship  Earth  stood  the 

203 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

white  man  steering  it  whither  he  would.  He 
was  captain.  He  had  the  firearms.  He  alone 
knew  invention  and  science.  He  had  the  chart 
in  the  command  "Thou  shalt  love  thy  neighbor 
as  thyself,"  and  he  had  the  Golden  Rule  as 
compass.  He  knew  the  form  of  the  ship — 
none  other  knew.  To  him  was  given  the  great- 
est opportunity  ever  known,  the  most  fearful 
responsibility,  the  most  awful  opening  for 
service.  He  had  the  chance  to  remake  a 
world ! 

He  failed.  He  refused  the  opportunity. 
He,  as  captain,  betrayed  his  trust.  Accepting 
the  cloak  of  Christianity,  the  white  race  has 
denied  Jesus  a  million  times  each  hour.  False 
followers  of  the  Prince  of  Peace,  the  white 
race  took  to  pagan  lands  undreamed-of  engines 
of  murder  and  unheard-of  efficiency  in  it. 
Professing  the  faith  which  began  in  a  crude 
communism  which  gave  to  each  as  he  had  need 
from  those  who  possessed,  and  under  which 
none  wanted,  the  white  races  have  not  only  not 
tried  to  extirpate  poverty  among  themselves, 

204 


THE  WHITE  PERIL 

but  they  have  impoverished,  enslaved  and 
extirpated  whole  empires  for  money. 

The  white  races  accepted  Christianity,  and 
paganized  it.  They  threw  away  the  democ- 
racy of  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount,  and  quarrel- 
ing over  the  theology  of  Paul,  followed  Mars, 
Thor  and  Moloch  as  of  old.  They  have  never 
developed  a  Christian  nation.  Feared  and 
hated  all  over  the  world,  the  white  race  is 
largely  responsible  for  the  imminence  of  the 
other  world  perils.  Our  very  physiognomy  is 
repulsive  to  people  of  other  races — we  are  the 
Great  White  Beasts  of  humanity. 

And  now,  as  if  to  give  us  another  chance 
for  redemption,  there  is  being  revealed  to  the 
white  race — and  to  it  almost  exclusively — the 
vision  of  democracy.  This  is  the  real  Second 
Coming  of  Christ.  This  vision  comes  to  an 
intellect  in  which  honesty  and  candor  have 
been  deified  through  the  redemptive  grace  of 
modern  science.  So  the  crisis  of  the  white 
peril  is  on,  in  the  question  as  to  whether  the 
white  race  will  be  true  to  Christianity  as  re- 

205 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

vealed'in  democracy,  or  will  be  false  to  it  as 
it  was  to  its  first  revelation. 

It  is  not  too  late  for  the  white  peril  to  be 
turned  into  the  hope  of  the  world.  It  may 
be.  We  have  lost  the  confidence  of  the  other 
passengers  on  the  good  ship  Earth,  and  we 
can  win  it  again  only  by  bringing  our  govern- 
ments up  to  our  highest  ideals  and  living 
down  our  past.  Not  until  we  have  so  lived 
our  Christianity  and  our  democracy  that  our 
purposes  shall  be  known  to  be  pure,  and  not 
until  we  have  extirpated  our  unchristian  pov- 
erty and  oppression,  can  we  expect  our  brother 
races  to  believe  in  us  as  true  soldiers  of  the 
common  good. 


CHAPTER  XIX 

THE  MINGLING  OF  THE  PEOPLES 

IS  Mars  inhabited? 
Professor  Lowell,  of  Harvard,  says  yes. 
Probably  most  people  of  ordinary  intelligence 
believe  him. 

Life  came  to  the  good  ship  Earth,  not  by 
a  mile-long  string  of  animals  moving  up  the 
gangplank  "two  by  two,"  as  we  are  tunefully 
told  was  the  case  when  Noah  took  on  his  pas- 
sengers, but  with  the  evolution  of  that  mar- 
velous slime,  protoplasm,  of  which  we  have 
spoken.  Mars  has  as  good  a  chance  to  have 
had  life,  as  the  Earth.  Like  the  Earth,  Mars 
was  once  gaseous,  then  was  compressed  by 
gravity,  growing  hot  in  the  process.  On  Mars, 
as  on  the  Earth,  God  shook  the  cosmic  pre- 
scription for  millenniums. 

Why  should  we  not  believe  that  there,  on 
some  creative  day,  as  here,  in  the  process  of 

207 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

this  mighty  shaking,  the  atoms  of  carbon, 
hydrogen,  oxygen  and  nitrogen  were  piled  up 
into  the  inconceivably  complex  molecule  of 
protoplasm? 

Professor  Lowell  in  the  canals  discovered 
by  Schiaparelli,  sees  strips  of  irrigated  lands. 
He  sees  the  water  flowing  from  the  pole — 
where  all  the  water  on  Mars  is  found — and 
irrigating  these  long  strips,  and  broader 
spaces  where  the  canals  have  their  junctions. 

Arrhenius,  the  scientist  who  has  told  us  that 
owing  to  the  carbonic  acid  gas  which  we  are 
pouring  into  the  air  in  the  process  of  burning 
the  coal  taken  from  the  bunkers  of  the  good 
ship  Earth,  the  climate  of  the  globe  is  becom- 
ing gradually  warmed,  and  will  continue  to 
grow  warmer  for  a  thousand  years — Arrhenius 
denies  Lowell's  conclusions.  He  thinks  the 
canals  of  Mars  instead  of  being  strips  of  crops, 
are  huge  cracks  in  the  Martian  surface,  like 
the  long  straight  fractures  in  plate-glass — or 
the  curved  cracks  we  sometimes  see. 

I  have  heard  Arrhenius,  and  his  arguments 
are  very  strong;  but  Lowell  still  holds  to  his 

208 


THE  MINGLING  OF  PEOPLES 

original  beliefs.  He  regards  the  canals  as  the 
results  of  the  labors  of  intelligent  beings.  If 
so,  these  beings  are  like  us  in  intelligence. 
They  are  engineers — for  the  lines  run  as 
straight  as  a  stretched  cord  for  thousands  of 
miles.  Some  of  them,  too,  run  in  curves — but 
perfect  curves  like  those  made  by  an  engineer, 
and  not  like  the  accidental  curves  one  sees  in 
fractured  glass.  Sometimes  these  canals  are 
double — as  if  the  supply  of  water  were  more 
than  could  be  economically  distributed  by 
laterals  from  one  great  ditch,  wherefore 
another  is  supplied  to  use  the  surplus,  when  it 
exists,  as  in  a  wet  season.  I  do  not  think  that 
Arrhenius  fully  disposes  of  this  very  fascinat- 
ing argument  of  Lowell's. 

The  lesson  to  us  is  the  same,  whichever  is 
right.  The  canals  as  Lowell  sees  them  illus- 
trate the  advantages  to  the  inhabitants,  if  they 
grow  intelligent  enough  to  see  that  the  planet 
on  which  they  live  is  their  common  inherit- 
ance, and  must  be  managed  as  a  unit  if  it  is 
to  accommodate  their  multiplied  hosts,  espe- 
cially when  the  globe  waxes  old  and  much 

209 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

of  its  capacity  for  sustaining  life  has  been  lost 

In  our  case,  we  are  losing  life-stuff  by  its 
washing  out  into  the  seas,  and  by  chemical 
changes  and  absorption. 

In  the  case  of  Mars,  we  know  not  of  the 
other  conditions,  but  we  do  know  that  her 
supply  of  water  has  so  been  absorbed  into  the 
globe  that  there  are  no  longer  oceans  such  as 
we  have,  but  at  most,  only  small  seas  at  the 
poles — a  condition  that  will  sometime  prevail 
on  our  planet. 

Such  enormous  works  as  the  Martian  canals 
are  only  possible  to  a  world  in  which  such 
organizations  as  tribes,  states,  peoples  and 
nations  have  been  abolished,  and  all  peoples 
have  been  merged  in  the  Parliament  of  Man, 
the  Federation  of  the  World. 

For  the  Martian  canals  run  from  the  poles, 
clean  across  the  equator,  and  down  the  other 
hemisphere — as  if  with  us  a  canal  were  drawn 
as  true  as  a  straight-edge  from  Cape  Horn  to 
Winnipeg,  or  from  St.  Petersburg  to  the  Cape 
of  Good  Hope. 

We  passengers  on  the  good  ship  Earth 
210 


THE  MINGLING  OF  PEOPLES 

could  not  do  such  things,  if  we  knew  how. 
We  have  not  the  intelligence,  in  the  first  place, 
to  move  such  huge  amounts  of  earth  with  such 
economy  as  to  gain  food  enough  by  the  opera- 
tion to  replace  that  used  up  in  the  work.  So 
for  us,  it  would  be  economically  impossible. 
The  great  tribes  we  call  nations  would  stand 
in  the  way.  The  passengers  on  one  part  of  the 
decks  would  use  armies  and  navies  to  keep 
their  fellow  passengers  on  other  parts  of  the 
decks  from  carrying  out  projects  having  for 
their  object  the  improvement  of  the  ship  as 
a  place  of  residence — as  a  craft  in  which  to 
voyage  to  the  Unknown. 

We  are  still  so  narrow! 

If  Lowell's  theory  of  Mars  is  correct,  the 
Martians  are  as  superior  to  us  in  organization 
and  capacity  for  government  and  collective 
action  as  they  are  in  the  power  to  move  earth 
and  rocks. 

In  Mars,  the  people  know  that  the  planet 
belongs  to  the  people  born  into  life  upon  it; 
as  the  good  ship  Earth  belongs  by  every  rule 
of  righteousness,  in  common  to  us  Earth- 

211! 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

beings  who  are  similarly  born  into  life  upon 
our  wildly-flying  air-ship. 

The  Martians  know  that  Mars  is  theirs  in 
common.  We  know  that  the  Earth  is  ours  in 
common.  The  Martians  evidently  act  on  a 
world-wide  scale  to  conserve  and  use  their 
planetary  resources.  We  are  not  yet  proven  to 
possess  the  ability  to  conserve  our  natural  re- 
sources even  on  the  small  scale  of  the  nation. 

And  see  the  problems  that  confront  us! 

We  must  save  the  soil.  We  must  keep  the 
coal  from  being  wasted.  We  must  look  after 
the  iron,  the  silver,  the  gold,  the  copper,  the 
manganese.  We  must  build  our  waterways — 
a  job  less  only  than  that  which  Mars  seems  to 
have  accomplished.  We  must  save  the  coal 
by  using  water-power  wherever  possible  in  its 
place.  We  must  use  the  huge  peat  supplies 
for  fuel.  We  must  see  that  the  supplies  of 
phosphorus,  nitrogen,  potash  and  sulphur,  on 
which  the  fertility  of  the  soil  depends,  are  not 
wasted  nor  monopolized.  We  must  restore 
and  conserve  our  forests.  We  must  sweeten 
the  acid  soils  of  the  Earth  with  lime.  We  must 

212 


THE  MINGLING  OF  PEOPLES 

put  under  lock  and  key  against  waste  the  oil 
and  the  natural  gas.  We  must  see  to  it  that 
the  manures  are  restored  to  the  soil  from  the 
towns  and  cities,  and  that  the  human  waste 
now  exhausting  our  lands  by  the  loss  of  sew- 
age, is  saved  that  the  human  race  may  be  saved. 

And  we  must  extirpate  poverty,  lift  the 
masses  of  all  lands  to  that  plane  of  intellectual 
activity  and  opulence  which  will  cause  them 
to  cease  to  multiply  as  the  poorest  races  now 
do  and  always  will  multiply.  We  must  stop 
the  survival  of  the  unfit,  by  making  every- 
body fit. 

Can  we  do  these  things  while  our  right  and 
wrong  are  notions  bounded  by  lines  of  states, 
nations,  or  even  races? 

Can  we  do  these  things  in  the  absence  of 
action  and  feeling  on  the  cosmic  scale — con- 
sidering this  our  Earth  as  a  unit — the  Mar- 
tian way? 

The  Lusitania  has  to  be  controlled  as  a 
whole.  Otherwise  she  would  go  on  the  rocks. 
We  have  fancied  that  the  planet  Mars  is 

213 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

managed  as  a  whole — one  single  planetary 
nation.  The  good  ship  Earth  may  sometime 
need  to  pass  under  planetary  control — I  do  not 
see  how  in  the  last  analysis  her  greatest  ma- 
terial resources — soil,  phosphorus,  potash,  oil, 
coal,  iron  and  other  treasures  locked  up  in  her 
bunkers,  can  be  managed  in  the  absence  of 
planetary  control.  For  the  present  we  can 
do  without  it.  The  good  ship  Earth  steers 
herself  by  automatic  wireless  control  from  the 
batteries  of  the  infinite  force. 

It  is  well  she  does.  For  we  are  miserably 
divided — we  passengers — into  cliques  and 
groups  and  gangs,  cabin,  forecastle,  cook's  gal- 
ley and  on  deck.  What  a  motley  crew  is  the 
human  race!  Pirates,  pilgrims,  coolies,  blacks, 
whites,  yellows,  browns,  Kanakas,  Lascars, 
Yankees,  Japs,  Portuguese,  Malays,  mission- 
aries, convicts,  slaves,  Eurasians,  Alan  Brecks 
and  Captain  Dodds,  Captain  Kidds  and  Mid- 
shipman Easies.  All  these  with  their  conflict- 
ing ideas — where  they  have  any  ideas  at  all — 
make  world-wide  team-work  in  conservation 
or  even  conversation,  the  wildest  of  dreams. 

214 


THE  MINGLING  OF  PEOPLES 

And  yet  that  is  what  is  required  for  planetary 
control. 

The  races  know  one  another  better  than  they 
used  to  do — that  is  quite  true.  But  does  this 
new  acquaintanceship  really  mean  anything  in 
the  way  of  the  wiping  out  of  national  or  racial 
lines?  Are  we  of  the  Earth's  crew  any  closer 
together  spiritually  than  we  were  when  igno- 
rant of  the  existence  of  the  remoter  parts  of  the 
ship  on  which  we  sail?  Are  we  close  enough 
so  that  we  may  mix  nation  with  nation  ad 
libitum?  Has  the  principle  of  brotherhood 
so  far  approached  attainability  that  men  of 
one  nation  have  the  moral  right  to  enter 
another  nation's  doors  at  will?  These  are  the 
greatest  practical  questions  in  the  world  poli- 
tics of  the  future.  And  they  must  be  settled 
according  to  their  right  and  wrong,  rather 
than  on  the  basis  of  weak  vs.  strong  if  our  civ- 
ilization is  to  stand  the  test  of  the  future. 

The  right  of  expatriation  is  the  complement 
of  the  right  of  immigration.  These  two  prin- 
ciples test  our  understandings  with  our  fellow 
nations.  The  English-speaking  nations  have 

2IS 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

led  in  maintaining  the  right  of  citizens  to 
enter  freely  and  dwell  in  the  territories  of 
other  nations.  The  British  navvy  by  the  road- 
side will  tell  you  on  all  occasions  that  his  is  a 
"free  country" — and  he  really  means  free — 
free  to  enter,  free  to  leave.  But  Englishmen 
are  asking  whether  or  not  this  freedom  to  enter 
England  is  not  carried  a  bit  too  far.  Canada, 
with  her  great  unoccupied  spaces,  is  turning 
"undesirable"  immigrants  away — she  will 
soon  close  her  doors  against  Asiatics.  Aus- 
tralia and  New  Zealand  are  still  more  insistent 
on  their  right  to  say  who  shall  come  in — in 
spite  of  their  sparse  populations. 

In  fact,  it  seems  that  our  increased  knowl- 
edge of  one  another  as  peoples,  is  coming  with 
a  world-wide  reaction  against  the  untram- 
meled  intermingling  of  nation  with  nation. 
We  find  that  we  like  some  of  our  fellow  pas- 
sengers better  than  others;  and  curiously,  these 
likes  and  dislikes  are  determined  more  by  color 
than  anything  else.  Is  this  pure  unreasoning 
prejudice?  I  prefer  to  think  that  it  is  a 
psychic  recognition  of  the  fact  that  the  sort 

216 


THE  MINGLING  OF  PEOPLES 

of  cross-breeds  which  would  result  are  unde- 
sirable. This  sort  of  repugnance  is  not  con- 
fined to  the  human  race — it  is  found  sown  all 
over  the  field  of  hybridization. 

The  test  of  any  social  act — or  at  least  any 
governmental  or  sociological  proposition,  is 
its  bearing  on  democracy.  Will  the  inter- 
mingling of  the  races  further  or  hinder  the 
perfecting  of  democracy?  This  is  to  be  de- 
cided in  every  case  on  the  basis  of  the  charac- 
ter of  the  races  proposed  to  be  mixed — their 
ethnic  character,  and  their  beliefs  and 
thoughts.  That  we  have  a  right  to  keep  out 
of  our  nation  undesirable  factors  seems  ob- 
vious. Other  nations  have  the  same  right.  I 
think  we  should  make  very  undesirable  citi- 
zens of  Hindustan  or  Japan  if  we  emigrated 
thither  in  large  numbers.  It  would  not  be  so, 
perhaps,  in  the  case  of  emigration  to  France 
or  Ireland.  The  Japanese  ought  to  keep  us 
out  in  such  a  case.  We  have  the  right  to  keep 
out  the  Asiatics.  They  will  interfere  with  our 
working  out  of  the  great  experiment  of  democ- 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

racy,  if  they  come.    We  have  one  race  ques- 
tion.   We  can  not  live  with  another. 

Our  quarters  on  the  good  ship  Earth  are 
ours  because  we  find  ourselves  in  them.  Our 
title  is  the  same  as  the  title  of  a  club  to  its  club- 
house— and  we  have  the  same  right  to  keep 
out  those  who  are  not  clubable. 

There  are  immigrants  who  must  under- 
stand that  we  will  not  allow  them  to  come  in 
large  numbers  to  dwell  among  us.  This  does 
not  imply  enmity  toward  them  on  our  part. 
It  does  not  imply  superiority  on  our  part  or 
impute  inferiority  on  theirs.  It  all  depends 
on  other  matters. 

We  have  a  democracy  to  work  out;  and  we 
are  already  divided  into  laboring  classes, 
leisure  classes,  aristocrats,  monopolists,  nobles, 
commoners,  Latins,  Slavs,  negroes,  whites, 
financiers,  tramps  and  the  like.  We  are  not 
at  all  sure  that  we  can  make  a  success  of  it  as 
things  stand  now,  without  making  them  any 
worse. 

Now  we  are  so  constituted  that  the  presence 
218 


THE  MINGLING  OF  PEOPLES 

among  us  of  people  who  look  pronouncedly 
unlike  us  at  once  starts  a  race  question.  Silly 
of  us,  maybe,  but  it  can't  be  denied,  nor  argued 
out  of  us.  Prejudices,  instincts,  intuitions  are 
all  very  important.  We  are  all  the  time  find- 
ing how  much  better  founded  they  are  apt 
to  be  than  are  some  of  our  reasoned  convic- 
tions. Anyhow,  peoples  can  not  be  made  over, 
but  must  be  accepted  as  they  are,  save  for  the 
ameliorating  influences  of  time  and  progress. 
Intimate  relations  between  races  are  not 
always  improper.  Where  outward  appear- 
ances will  allow  the  commingling  to  take  place 
without  shock,  this  mingling  seems  not  a  bad 
thing.  Americans  do  not  seem  any  the  worse 
for  the  fact  that  they  are  the  contents  of  a 
melting  pot  of  nations.  When  Lafcadio 
Hearn  and  Sir  Edwin  Arnold  fell  in  love  with 
the  life  of  old  Japan,  that  love  was  the  title  of 
each  to  naturalization  in  Nippon.  That  great 
American  chemist  who  is  a  Japanese  by  birth 
won  the  right  to  American  citizenship  when 
he  became  enamored  of  American  life.  Thou- 
sands of  similar  cases  of  real  intellectual  and 

219 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

spiritual    naturalization    may    be    found    in 
stations  both  exalted  and  lowly. 

But  most  of  our  immigration  is  thrust  into 
our  nation's  body  like  a  nail  into  wood  by 
economic  forces.  Where  the  foreign  body  is 
capable  of  assimilation,  as  has  been  the  case 
with  most  of  our  European  immigration,  this 
is  not  necessarily  a  fatal  thing,  though  it  is  al- 
ways a  bad  thing.  But  the  negro,  the  Jap- 
anese, the  Hindu  and  the  Chinese  fester  in  our 
flesh.  Tens  of  millions  are  ready  to  come,  not 
because  they  love  us  or  our  institutions,  but  as 
human  merchandise.  On  the  one  side  is  the 
awful  poverty  of  their  lands  from  which  they 
would  flee  to  a  land  of  plenty;  and  on  the  other 
is  the  greed  of  steamship  companies  itching 
for  the  dividends  to  be  made  by  transporting 
them  hither  and  the  greed  of  employers  itch- 
ing for  cheap  labor.  On  both  shores  of  our 
continent — the  poorest  and  most  unassimilable 
of  Europe;  the  Semitic  races  from  the  Medi- 
terranean Basin;  and  the  Hindus,  and  Mon- 
golians on  the  Pacific — they  would  land  in 
swarms,  were  we  to  allow  them. 

220 


THE  MINGLING  OF  PEOPLES 

The  oceans  can  no  longer  be  regarded  as 
impassable  barriers  against  actual  migrations 
of  peoples.  The  ships  exist,  or  can  be  built. 
The  would-be  immigrants — for  the  most  part 
honest  and  industrious — are  ready  to  mort- 
gage their  earnings  for  passage.  The  finan- 
cial power  exists  to  finance  the  migration. 
The  danger  is  a  real  one,  and  one  which  will 
grow  with  the  increase  of  knowledge  and  the 
progress  of  the  arts  and  sciences. 

Australia  has  the  same  problem,  and  so  has 
Canada,  South  Africa  and  South  America. 
The  Spanish-American  peoples  are  peculiarly 
exposed  to  this  danger  of  race  mixture  minus 
human  affinity. 

The  present  war  in  Turkey  shows  the  result 
of  such  intermingling.  For  five  hundred 
years  the  Turks  have  festered  in  the  flesh  of 
Europe — a  foreign  body.  Such  festerings 
must  cause  wars.  As  between  such  conditions 
and  wars,  the  wars  are  far  more  tolerable. 

Sometime  things  will  be  splendidly  other- 
wise. We  shall  have  solved  the  critical  prob- 
lems of  our  civilization — democracy  per- 

221 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

fected,  poverty  extirpated,  enlightenment 
made  universal.  So  will  the  other  nations, 
unless  there  be  some  beyond  redemption. 
There  will  be  no  economic  pressure  toward 
emigration.  There  will  be  less  tendency  to- 
ward race  admixture;  and  what  there  is  will 
be  natural  and  good.  Immigration  now 
brings  that  bodily  contact  which  Swinburne 
tells  us  of  in  the  story  of  the  French  man-of- 
the-people  and  the  lady  of  high  degree,  who, 
during  the  Terror  were  stripped  naked  and 
cast  bound  together  into  the  Seine.  In  that 
better  day  it  will  be  the  drawing  together  of 
affinities,  not  the  crushing  together  of  op- 
posites  and  strangers.  Until  the  better  day 
comes,  there  will  be  more  of  evil  than  of  good 
in  it. 


CHAPTER  XX 

PATRIOTISM — VICE  OR  VIRTUE? 

IT  was  a  race  of  children  who  first  popu- 
lated the  decks  of  the  good  ship  Earth,  and 
from  whom  we  are  descended;  but  not  in  all 
respects  children  like  ours.  They  were  very 
low  in  intelligence.  They  had  much  of  the 
fierceness  and  cruelty  of  the  beasts  of  the  field 
and  forest — and  they  never  grew  up.  Our 
children  pass  through  the  various  stages  of 
low  intelligence,  deceitfulness,  cruelty  and 
the  like  very  swiftly,  and  guided  by  our  civili- 
zation. These  remote  ancestors  of  ours  who 
once  made  up  the  passenger  list  of  the  old  ship 
were  every  one  of  them  cases  of  arrested  de- 
velopment. They  became  men  and  women 
physically,  but  never  passed  mentally  beyond 
the  child  stage  of  development. 

We  may  easily  understand  this  if  we  will 
consider  such  a  tribe  as  the  White  Eskimos 

223 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

just  discovered  by  Steffansson  in  Arctic  Can- 
ada. They  are  probably  descended  from 
Norse  emigrants  who  possessed  all  the  prog- 
ress our  ancestors  had  a  thousand  years  ago; 
but  they  have  lost  all  the  civilization  that 
filled  Iceland  with  poets,  and  produced  a 
literature  which  is  still  studied  in  every  cul^ 
tured  nation.  They  have  no  marriage  rite,  no 
books,  no  firearms,  no  aspirations.  They  only 
hunt  and  eat,  beget  descendants,  and  struggle 
with  nature.  Theirs  is  a  case  of  arrested 
development — arrested  by  the  very  circum- 
stances which  stopped  short  of  our  racial  stat- 
ure all  the  early  races  of  men. 

Civilization  is  not  a  matter  of  inherent 
racial  capacity.  Rather  it  is  a  thing  of  racial 
accumulation,  like  the  limestone  reefs  built 
by  the  coral  insect.  We  seem  greater  because 
we  stand  on  what  our  ancestors  built.  And  in 
the  course  of  the  long  millenniums  there  has 
been  a  slow  race  development,  from  the  man 
of  the  Neanderthal  skull  to  the  man  of  to-day. 
But  this  is  so  slow  that  it  can  not  be  measured. 
We  are  in  no  perceptible  way  naturally 

224 


PATRIOTISM 

superior  to  the  German  savages,  the  Norsd 
vikings  and  their  crews,  the  Romans,  the 
Greeks,  the  Assyrians  or  the  Babylonians.  Our 
development  has  not  been  quite  so  quickly  ar- 
rested— that  is  about  all  the  difference. 

Now  these  crafty,  cruel,  lying,  thievish 
children,  our  ancestors,  seem  to  have  been  in- 
clined to  live  solitary  lives  like  some  other 
animals — the  grizzly  bear,  the  tiger,  the  lion. 
The  wonderful  strength  of  the  family  ties — 
which  was  the  beginning  of  civilization — held 
them  together  into  families,  and  from  families 
the  tribe  sprung.  The  tribes  preyed  upon 
one  another.  Hate  was  the  rule  of  life  toward 
all  but  "our  people,"  and  "our  tribe."  Even 
the  gods  were  tribal,  with  a  divine  jurisdiction 
stopping  at  the  village  limits. 

As  family  grew  to  tribe,  so  strong  tribes 
grew  to  nations.  The  germ  of  organization 
was  germinating.  And  out  of  the  strange, 
childish-savage  hatred  and  cruelty  of  tribe  to 
tribe,  there  was  born  a  curious,  glorious,  con- 
temptible, admirable  vice-virtue  called  pa- 
triotism. It  still  persists,  as  the  most  univer- 

225 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

sally-claimed  and  the  most  generally-pos- 
sessed of  social  qualities.  All  men  are  nor- 
mally patriots,  becoming  traitors  only  under 
anomalous  conditions.  Scoundrels  are  quite 
as  good  patriots  as  decent  people — and  as  a 
rule  far  more  vociferous  ones.  The  quality, 
therefore,  is  not  possessed  by  good  people 
alone,  like  unselfishness,  nor  by  bad  people 
alone,  like  cruelty.  It  inspires  such  literature 
as  Scott's  "Breathes  there  a  man  with  soul  so 
dead",  Collins'  "How  sleep  the  brave",  and 
Hale's  Man  Without  a  Country.  Its  most 
gross  and  obvious  emblem  is  the  flag,  or  the 
"Emperor's  coat",  and  its  cheapest  badge  is 
punctilious  outward  respect  and  worship  of 
these  emblems.  It  still  carries  with  it  much  of 
the  hate  of  olden  times,  and  is  the  sentiment 
upon  which  the  predatory  powers  play  in 
securing  public  support  for  our  monstrous 
militarism. 

Now  why  should  we,  who  inherit  a  portion 
of  the  deck  of  the  good  ship  Earth,  look  any 
the  less  kindly  on  a  fellow  man  because  he 
lives  across  the  line  in  Canada,  or  over  the 

226 


PATRIOTISM 

water  in  Japan  or  Germany?  A  man  once 
sat  dry-eyed  and  unmoved  through  a  sermon 
which  drew  tears  to  all  other  eyes.  "Why  are 
you  so  cold  and  hard?"  he  was  asked.  "I  don't 
live  in  this  parish,"  said  he,  "I'm  just  passing 
through." 

"My  country!"  ran  the  "patriot's"  toast. 
"May  she  be  ever  right — but  right  or  wrong, 
my  country!"  Such  patriotism  launches  every 
battle  fleet  of  aggression,  and  has  put  to  the 
sword  a  thousand  cities.  Such  patriotism  fills 
the  world  to-day  with  the  debt,  destruction, 
waste  and  penury  of  the  tremendous  militarism 
which  astonishes  and  appals  every  thinking 
mind. 

But,  as  individual  hate  grew  to  family  love, 
as  family  enmities  were  lost  in  tribal  good 
will,  and  as  tribal  wars  ceased  in  the  wider 
brotherhood  of  the  nation,  so  there  is  strug- 
gling into  birth  a  new  thing — International- 
ism. When  Great  Britain  attacked  the  Boers, 
there  were  great  men  in  England  who  were 
frankly  and  openly  pro-Boer,  because  the 
Boers  were  right.  Many  in  the  United  States 

227 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

frankly  and  openly  sympathized  with  the 
Filipinos  in  their  resistance  to  our  aggressions. 
Hundreds  of  thousands  in  Russia  and  Austria 
the  day  this  is  written,  are  protesting  against 
war  with  the  Balkan  Allies,  or  the  opposed 
powers  of  Europe,  not  because  of  cowardice 
or  reluctance  to  take  the  chances  of  war,  but 
for  the  sake  of  brotherhood. 

Patriotism  can  not  be  dispensed  with,  any 
more  than  inter-family  hate  could  have  been 
in  its  time.  Each  is  a  sort  of  temporary  defen- 
sive provision  of  nature,  like  the  white  plu- 
mage of  birds  in  snow-time.  But  it  is  gradually 
blossoming  into  something  higher.  It  can  not 
be  accounted  among  the  eternal  virtues.  We 
shall  gradually  rise  above  the  vulgar  enmities 
implied  in  the  hate  of  those  who  live  else- 
where on  the  decks  of  the  good  ship  Earth; 
and  from  these  come  most  of  what  we  call 
patriotism. 

When  men  begin  asking  themselves  as  to 
the  relations  of  their  nations  with  other  peo- 
ples, "Is  our  attitude  right  or  wrong?"  pa- 
triotism takes  on  a  glorious  new  aspect.  There 

228 


PATRIOTISM 

was  never  so  much  of  this  international  con- 
science as  now.  "My  country,  right  or  wrong," 
is  giving  way  to  "Is  my  country  right,  or 
wrong?" 

Universal  peace  1  Universal  disarmament  1 
Universal  good  will!  These  can  come  only 
with  universal  prosperity  and  universal  under- 
standing. When  they  come,  patriotism  in  its 
present  sense,  will  have  died.  Fraternity  will 
have  taken  its  place,  and  the  old  word  pa- 
triotism, still  holding  place  in  the  language, 
will  have  come  to  mean  a  localized  phase  of 
universal  love  and  brotherhood. 


CHAPTER  XXI 

THE  EVILS  OF  GOOD  GOVERNMENT 

THE  notion  of  a  fusion  of  all  nations,  the 
end  of  independent  nationality,  is  not  a 
new  one.  It  is  more  complete  than  formerly, 
for  we  know  the  shape  of  the  great  air-ship  on 
which  we  sail,  and  its  size.  The  ancients  did 
not.  But  Alexander  the  Great  set  out  to  con- 
quer the  whole  earth.  He  did  not  expect  to 
subdue  the  monsters  that  lived  in  the  Greek 
imagination  to  the  east  and  the  west.  And 
to  the  north  were  the  Hyperboreans  and  the 
ice,  and  to  the  south  were  seas  that  boiled  with 
heat.  These  were  not  in  the  world  of  Alex- 
ander, but  all  he  knew,  he  conquered. 

So  it  was  with  other  conquerors  of  the  an- 
cient world.  What  they  knew  they  tried  to 
seize.  The  world  trust  was  in  their  minds,  just 
as  it  is  in  the  minds  of  the  Socialists  now — but 
in  diametrically  different  form.  In  the  one 

230 


EVILS  OF  GOOD  GOVERNMENT 

case  it  was  the  centralized  rule  of  a  conqueror 
and  a  tyrant;  in  the  other  it  is  the  centralized 
rule  of  the  majority. 

The  dream  of  world  power  seems  to  have 
passed  away  for  a  while  from  the  minds  of 
kings  and  emperors.  The  government  trust,  if 
one  is  making,  is  at  the  stage  of  the  splitting 
of  the  government  business  into  huge  blocks. 
Russia,  China,  Japan  and  England  control 
most  of  Asia  and  are  absorbing  the  rest.  Eng- 
land and  the  United  States  govern  most  of 
North  America,  and  are  gradually  absorbing 
the  rest.  England,  France,  Holland,  Brazil 
and  Argentina  govern  most  of  South  America, 
and  are  kept  from  absorbing  the  rest  only  by 
the  Monroe-Doctrine  overlordship  of  the 
United  States.  England,  Holland,  Germany, 
France  and  the  United  States  rule  most  of  the 
great  islands  of  the  East  and  West  Indies.  Eng- 
land, France,  Germany,  Belgium,  Portugal, 
Spain  and  Italy  rule  Africa  with  negligible 
exceptions.  Europe  is  ruled  by  two  groups — 
England,  France  and  Russia  in  the  Triple 
Entente,  and  Germany,  Austria  and  Italy  in 

231 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

the  Triple  Alliance.  Thus  is  the  good  ship 
Earth  in  the  hands  of  a  certain  great  commu- 
nity of  interest  in  government.  It  is  for  all  the 
world  like  the  system  of  interlocking  direc- 
torates by  which  Wall  Street  parcels  out  the 
industrial  rulership  of  the  United  States. 

Now  this  system  of  spheres  of  influence 
works  against  the  little  country  and  the  little 
peoples.  It  works  in  various  ways  in  relation 
to  self-government.  In  the  English  speaking 
dominions  of  the  British  empire,  it  works  for 
local  self-government  and  democracy.  There 
are  no  better  governments  than  those  of  Can- 
ada, Australia,  New  Zealand  and  South 
Africa.  In  the  dominions  of  the  other  mem- 
bers of  the  government  combine,  it  works 
against  democracy.  Over  most  of  the  colored 
and  backward  races,  this  dominion,  which  is 
mostly  a  white  man's  dominion,  is  frankly 
cruel  and  tyrannical  at  its  worst,  like  the  rule 
of  Japan  in  Korea  or  Italy  in  Tripolitania,  or 
at  its  best,  is  paternalistic  like  British  rule  in 
India  or  ours  in  the  Philippines.  And  this 
latter  phase  of  the  problem  leads  us  to  the 

232 


EVILS  OF  GOOD  GOVERNMENT 

question  of  the  perils  of  enforced  good  gov- 
ernment. 

There  is  an  almost  general  feeling  that  we 
justify  our  conquest  of  a  free  people  when  we 
give  that  people  what  we  call  "good  govern- 
ment." This  is  of  all  things  most  fallacious. 
In  the  first  place,  of  course,  our  good  govern- 
ment usually  turns  out  the  worst  in  the  world 
even  from  our  own  viewpoint.  England's 
dominions  are  well  governed  only  in  those 
cases  where  she  has  abandoned  the  attempt  to 
rule  and  turned  the  government  over  to  the 
people.  Her  rule  in  India,  like  ours  in  the 
Philippines,  is  highly  praised,  but  is  also  bit- 
terly condemned  by  good  judges. 

It  is  perfectly  true,  however,  that  an  enlight- 
ened conqueror  may,  and  frequently  does,  im- 
pose on  a  backward  people  a  better  govern- 
ment, judged  solely  by  present-day  results, 
than  they  could  give  themselves  in  their  pres- 
ent stage  of  development.  We  may  give  the 
Filipinos  railways,  public  baths,  sewers  and 
a  health  bureau  which  will  fight  the  tropic 
plagues  and  the  insanitary  practises  of  trop- 

233 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

ical  ignorance  and  depravity.  England  may 
do  the  same  in  her  empire.  So  may  each  of 
the  members  of  the  great  earthly  government 
combine.  This  is  what  Kipling  means  when 
he  urges  the  British — for  he  never  speaks  to 
any  audience  wider  than  the  white  society  of 
the  empire — to  "take  up  the  White  Man's 
Burden."  "Go  bind  your  sons  to  exile,"  he 
sings,  "to  serve  your  captives'  need!"  These 
"captives"  are  the  "new-caught,  sullen  peo- 
ples, half-devil  and  half-child." 

In  spite  of  these  fine  rantings,  however,  the 
real  danger  to  the  world  in  the  imperialisms 
of  the  government  combine,  lies  quite  as  much 
in  the  success  which  Kipling  claims  for  Eng- 
land in  India,  and  demands  everywhere,  as  in 
the  failures  which  Belgium  makes  in  the 
Kongo  and  Russia  in  the  Caucasus.  Bad  and 
cruel  government  of  the  tyrant  over  the  con- 
quered may  exterminate  an  undeveloped  peo- 
ple, but  a  "good"  government,  accomplishing 
for  a  people  through  compulsion  all  the  out- 
ward ameliorations  which  they  should  win 
for  themselves  may  produce  a  result  much 

234 


EVILS  OF  GOOD  GOVERNMENT 

worse  for  the  good  ship  Earth  than  the  ex- 
termination of  any  people. 

Good  government,  to  be  worth  anything, 
must  be  won  through  the  evolution  of  popular 
government.  The  winning  of  it  develops  the 
power  to  perpetuate  it.  We  learn  to  govern 
ourselves  by  governing  ourselves — it  can  be 
done  in  no  other  way.  Mexico  may  be  far 
from  democracy,  but  she  is  nearer  it  for  her 
ninety  years  of  effort  than  she  would  have 
been  by  submission  to  Spain — and  the  same 
is  true  of  all  the  Spanish-American  republics. 
They  are  falling  down,  but  learning  to  walk. 
India  will  never  learn  to  govern  herself  under 
present  conditions,  nor  will  the  Philippines, 
nor  Porto  Rico,  nor  any  "pacified"  colony 
denied  self-government  and  its  perils. 

But  the  worst  danger  in  enforced  good  gov- 
ernment lies  not  so  much  in  the  paralysis  of 
development  in  the  people,  as  in  its  effect  on 
the  increase  and  multiplication  of  the  unfit. 
Good  government  tends  to  make  its  most  rapid 
progress  in  the  saving  of  life — especially  in- 
fant life — through  sanitation,  vaccines,  serums 

235 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

— preventive  medicine — and  surgery.  This  is 
true  not  only  in  colonies,  of  course,  but  in  em- 
pires and  republics  called  self-governing. 

The  revolution  which  is  taking  place  in  the 
healing  art  has  already  transformed  it,  and  has 
only  begun.  Its  finest  manifestation  is  to  be 
seen  in  the  changed  mental  attitude  of  the 
medical  profession  toward  the  problems  of 
health.  Science  has  made  the  medical  pro- 
fession honest,  just  as  it  is  making  the  whole 
world  honest.  The  physician  of  the  olden 
time  did  business  on  the  strength  of  secret  po- 
tions and  marvelous  lotions  and  unguents.  His 
stock  in  trade  was  his  closely-guarded  for- 
mulas. The  present-day  medical  man  is  in 
disgrace  as  soon  as  he  refuses  to  tell  the  whole 
world  his  discovery.  The  first  duty  of  an  in- 
vestigator is  to  publish  abroad  what  he  has 
learned.  In  fact,  as  soon  as  a  medical  re- 
searcher has  found  something  significant,  even 
though  it  be  the  result  of  one  step  only  in  his 
investigation,  he  is  called  upon  by  the  ethics 
of  his  profession  to  make  it  public,  to  the  end 
that  others  may  be  encouraged  to  join  in  the 

236 


EVILS  OF  GOOD  GOVERNMENT 

work  or  that  they  may  receive  light  on  some 
of  their  own  peculiar  problems. 

The  result  is  a  sort  of  teamwork  that  is  ac- 
complishing wonders.  We  have  found  out 
that  many  of  our  ills  are  caused  by  minute 
animals  or  plants  which  find  their  way  into 
our  bodies.  Disease  thus  becomes  a  mere  mat- 
ter of  fact.  There  is  nothing  more  mysterious 
about  a  thousand  billions  of  little  plants  in- 
festing the  body  as  a  germ  disease  than  there 
is  in  the  matter  of  a  part  of  one  plant  thrust 
into  it  in  the  form  of  a  sliver  in  the  finger. 
The  problem  is  more  complex,  that  is  all. 

Drugs  are  becoming  obsolete,  except  as  they 
justify  themselves  in  the  rays  of  the  new  light. 
Nature  is  consulted.  How  does  the  body  nat- 
urally deal  with  these  intruders?  That  our 
bodies  have  adjusted  themselves  to  the  old 
warfare  with  germs  is  shown  by  the  fact  of 
immunity.  We  do  not  always  contract  dis- 
eases when  exposed  to  them;  and  we  have 
found  out  why.  The  body  has  means  of  fight- 
ing the  germs.  When  we  have  had  certain 
diseases  we  are  immune  to  them.  A  very  in- 

237 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

genious  but  not  altogether  satisfactory  theory 
of  immunity  has  been  built  up,  and  progress 
in  sanitation  is  largely  dependent  on  the  fact 
— not  the  theory — of  immunity.  Vaccines  and 
antitoxins  are  merely  man's  additions  to  the 
strength  of  nature's  forces.  They  have  already 
won  in  the  contest  with  smallpox,  diphtheria 
(which  has  been  identified  with  membranous 
croup),  typhoid  fever,  cerebro-spinal  menin- 
gitis, tetanus,  and  to  a  very  large  degree  with 
cholera,  bubonic  plague,  hydrophobia  and 
some  others  of  the  worst  diseases.  The  pros- 
pects are  that  cancer  and  leprosy  will  soon 
yield.  As  this  is  written  the  world  is  filled 
with  hope  that  the  Friedman  antitoxin  for  tu- 
berculosis will  do  what  Koch's  seemed  to  have 
accomplished  a  quarter  of  a  century  ago  but 
failed. 

Even  in  the  matter  of  medication,  great 
progress  has  been  made.  Salvarsan  and  neo- 
salvarsan  are  almost  specifics  for  syphilis — 
or  seem  to  be.  Quinine  as  a  drug  takes  place 
with  smallpox  vaccine  as  old  and  accidental 
discoveries  of  things  which  modern  science 

238 


EVILS  OF  GOOD  GOVERNMENT 

finds  good — the  former  as  a  cure  for  malaria, 
an4  the  latter  as  an  attenuated  virus  for  the 
prevention  of  smallpox.  The  study  of  the 
causes  of  diseases  opens  to  governmental  ac- 
tion tremendous  possibilities  in  the  way  of 
stamping  them  out.  We  know  that  malaria 
and  yellow  fever,  for  instance,  come  to  human 
beings  through  the  bites  of  mosquitoes  and  in 
no  other  way.  So  that  by  the  extermination 
of  mosquitoes,  or  their  avoidance,  we  can  do 
away  with  the  necessity  of  quinine  as  a  cure 
for  malaria,  and  make  up  for  our  lack  of  a 
vaccine  or  antitoxin  for  yellow  fever — one  or 
the  other  we  may  expect  to  be  discovered  at 
any  time. 

The  work  of  Stiles  on  hook-worm  is  per- 
haps the  most  brilliant  ever  performed  in  this 
great  field  of  brilliant  work,  and  has  resulted 
in  a  cheap  and  simple  cure  by  means  of  a 
medicine  for  this  plague,  which  probably  ac- 
counts for  more  of  the  torpor,  lassitude  and 
lack  of  enterprise  of  the  peoples  of  warm  cli- 
mates than  we  have  yet  suspected.  Spotted 
fever  has  been  traced  to  the  tick  and  its  host, 

239 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

the  rodent;  bubonic  plague  to  the  fleas  car- 
ried by  rats,  squirrels  and  other  small  animals, 
and  the  hunt  is  on  for  the  probable  insect  or 
animal  carriers  of  pellagra,  leprosy  and  many 
other  diseases.  There  is  no  contagious  or  in- 
fectious disease  which  is  not  under  surveil- 
lance by  these  skilled  detectives  of  science,  and 
the  hopeful  thing  is  that  they  all  have  clues. 
The  hunt  is  an  intelligent  hunt,  now,  whereas 
all  through  the  ages  of  the  past  it  has  been  a 
mere  matter  of  groping  in  the  dark.  Man  is 
in  the  field  against  disease  armed  with  weap- 
ons which  will  surely  give  him  the  victory. 

Marching  ahead  of  the  physician,  has  gone 
the  surgeon  with  aseptic  surgery,  and  anes- 
thetics. These  things  relate  largely  to  the  me- 
chanics of  the  healing  art;  and  their  history 
is  a  tale  of  wonders  with  which  the  average 
mind  is  more  familiar  than  with  the  more 
complex  matters  of  immunity,  anti-bodies, 
phagocytosis  and  opsonins  which  forbid  most 
of  us  to  pry  into  the  new  medicine.  But  sur- 
gery is  scarcely  less  important  in  the  cure  of 

240 


EVILS  OF  GOOD  GOVERNMENT 

disease  than  its  coordinate  branch  of  the  heal- 
ing art. 

Now,  no  people  can  voluntarily  take  advan- 
tage of  these  things  in  the  absence  of  intelli- 
gence. The  developed  man  will  not  have 
hook-worm;  the  undeveloped  and  untaught 
will  never  avoid  it.  Savages  may  be  told  about 
the  causes  of  bubonic  plague,  malaria,  yellow 
fever,  sleeping  sickness,  smallpox,  diphtheria 
and  the  like,  and  may  have  the  cures  or  pre- 
ventives placed  in  their  hands,  and  the  result 
will  be  negligible.  Nothing  but  a  "benefi- 
cent" tyranny  can  impose  these  things  upon 
such  people.  I  am  firmly  of  the  opinion  that 
such  a  well-meant  coercion,  in  so  far  as  it 
could  be  made  effective,  would  be  a  bad  thing 
for  the  world. 

It  is  an  iron  law  of  the  world's  welfare  that 
only  those  ought  to  be  saved  who  can  accom- 
plish their  own  salvation.  Educate  the  people 
of  all  lands  in  sanitation,  preventive  medicine, 
all  phases  of  the  healing  art;  but  except  per- 
haps in  the  case  of  a  salvable  minority  lagging 

241 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

behind  the  national  march  of  intellect,  the 
practise  of  these  arts  should  be  left  to  the  peo- 
ple themselves.  When  they  have  so  far  pro- 
gressed that  they  understand  these  things,  be- 
lieve in  them  and  practise  them  voluntarily, 
they  will  have  become  fit  for  salvation  from 
pestilence  and  insanitary  lives.  Not  before. 

Enforced  good  government — good  govern- 
ment carried  ahead  of  the  people's  develop- 
ment by  governing  classes  of  educated  people 
tends  to  an  undue  multiplication  of  the  pas- 
sengers on  the  good  ship  Earth — and  of  those 
least  fit  to  survive. 

Seven  out  of  every  ten  Chinese  babies  die  in 
infancy.  The  same  is  more  or  less  true  in 
India,  in  Russia,  and  wherever  poverty  and  ig- 
norance are  found  on  a  fertile  soil.  The  birth- 
rate among  the  poor  in  Mexico,  Central 
America  and  South  America  is  enormous.  To 
enforce  on  these  peoples  governments  which 
would  allow  the  birth-rate  to  express  itself  in 
multiplication  would  not  be  a  good  thing,  but 
a  great  evil. 

When  people  win  good  government  for 
242 


EVILS  OF  GOOD  GOVERNMENT 

themselves,  they  do  so  by  a  process  of  edu- 
cation, struggle,  development  and  evolution 
which  immensely  complicates  their  lives.  Our 
own  case  and  that  of  the  educated  and  enlight- 
ened classes  everywhere  are  instances  in  point. 
This  increase  in  the  complexity  of  life,  the 
freeing  of  women,  the  long  period  of  educa- 
tion— in  fact,  civilization — makes  a  high  birth- 
rate impossible.  The  imperialists  demand  that 
the  benefits  of  civilization  be  conferred  on 
these  peoples  in  advance  of  their  development. 
This  is  not  truly  kind  to  them,  and  it  is  a  peril 
to  the  world.  Let  us  help  these  peoples 
through  education,  missionary  effort,  every 
freely-offered  stimulus  to  development — and 
stop  there. 

Their  high  birth-rate  and  their  shocking 
death-rate  come  from  the  same  causes.  To  re- 
move one  result  by  force  and  leave  the  other 
unaffected  would  be  a  crime  against  the  civ- 
ilization of  the  world. 


CHAPTER  XXII 

THE  REAL  WHITE  MAN'S  BURDEN 

HERE  we  are,  the  whites — the  saloon  pas- 
sengers on  the  good  ship  Earth.  We 
have  the  most  roomy  quarters.  We  have  the 
wireless  service,  the  reading-rooms,  the  music 
and  the  daily  journals  of  our  flight  through 
space;  while  there  be  those  of  darker  skins 
and  darker  fate  who  "sit  in  darkness"  in  the 
steerage. 

We  have  Christianity,  in  an  imperfect  and 
undeveloped  form  in  our  lives  and  still  more 
perfectly  in  our  thoughts.  We  have  the  won- 
derful new  bible  of  science  which  has  gone  far 
to  redeem  our  souls  from  quibbles  and  uncan- 
dor,  and  has  brought  us  into  the  presence  of 
essential  honesty  for  the  first  time  in  the  his- 
tory of  the  race.  We  have  the  Christ  come 
again  truly  in  the  perfected  theory  of  democ- 
racy. These  things  have  come  to  be  current 

244 


THE  WHITE  MAN'S  BURDEN 

coin  in  the  commerce  of  speech  and  thought 
in  the  upper  circles  of  the  passenger  list  of  the 
good  ship  Earth — among  the  whites. 

They  are  spreading  to  the  yellows,  browns 
and  blacks,  to  be  sure.  Human  brains  are 
alike,  whatever  may  be  the  tinge  of  the  skin— 
and  souls  have  no  distinctions  of  color.  But 
in  the  main,  the  great  germinal  conceptions 
which  make  for  progress  are  the  possessions 
of  the  white  race. 

Have  we  a  duty  toward  those  "that  sit  in 
darkness"?  Is  there  a  real  "White  Man's  Bur- 
den" of  which  Kipling's  barbarous  image  of 
jailorship  is  a  shadowing-forth?  Does  it  make 
any  real  difference  to  the  white  man  as  to  what 
the  fate  of  the  other  races  turns  out  to  be?  Can 
he  do  anything  for  the  other  races,  even  if  he 
tries? 

He  must  do  something  for  them.  The 
blacks,  yellows,  reds  and  browns  are  contend- 
ers with  us  for  the  occupancy  of  the  ship. 
They  constitute  the  yellow  peril,  the  Moham- 
medan peril,  the  black  peril,  the  Hindu 
peril,  and  to  a  large  extent,  the  Spanish-Por- 

245 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

tuguese  peril.  The  races  on  the  earth  are  like 
the  cat,  the  dog  and  the  fox  which  were  sewed 
in  a  bag  and  hung  in  a  tree — they  can  not  ig- 
nore one  another. 

What  do  the  other  races  lack  which  we  pos- 
sess? Broadly,  they  lack  the  essentials  of  good 
safe  companionship  on  this  great  and  mysteri- 
ous voyage. 

They  lack  that  redeeming  honesty  of 
thought  which  science  has  given  our  best 
thought,  and  without  which  truth  can  not  be 
attained. 

They  lack  the  understanding  and  apprecia- 
tion of  democracy,  which  is  the  hope  of  the 
world  in  that  it  makes  for  the  development  of 
every  human  being,  rather  than  of  an  upper 
class  standing  on  the  masses'  necks.  Lacking 
that  they  must  always  be  Lascars,  Kanakas, 
beach-combers  and  pirates  of  the  ship's  crew. 

They  lack  knowledge  of  the  truths  of  Chris- 
tianity. And  lacking  that,  they  lack  the  spirit- 
ual basis  of  the  political  redemption  through 
democracy,  and  the  candor  and  good  faith  of 
science.  The  golden  rule  is  the  summation  of 

246 


THE  WHITE  MAN'S  BURDEN 

more  redemptive  politics  and  redemptive  sci- 
entific conduct  than  any  other  utterance  ever 
given  to  the  world.  The  Sermon  on  the  Mount 
is  the  magnetic  pole  of  ethics  to  which  all  com- 
passes of  life  must  point,  even  when  the  voy- 
ages are  frankly  otherwheres.  These  things 
the  white  race  possesses.  It  owes  to  the  other 
races  the  duty  of  carrying  them  to  all  peoples. 

In  short,  the  real  white  man's  burden  is  not 
that  of  conquest,  but  of  evangelization.  This 
must  be  done,  not  through  soldiers,  but 
through  missionaries.  The  greatest  profession 
of  the  future  among  us  must  be,  not  arms,  but 
teaching. 

And  first,  we  must  purge  ourselves  of  our 
own  gross  and  apparent  sins,  errors  and  short- 
comings. Our  message  is  that  of  the  redemp- 
tive power  of  the  principles  of  love,  knowl- 
edge and  democracy.  Well,  then  the  white  na- 
tions must  cease  to  kill,  to  oppress,  to  threaten. 
Otherwise  they  can  not  preach  love.  We  must 
cease  to  suppress  truth,  even  though  it  may 
seem  destructive  or  damaging  to  great  inter- 
ests. Otherwise,  we  can  not  teach  our  knowl- 

247 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

edge  with  authority.  We  must  do  away  with 
every  obstacle  to  the  exercise  of  the  popular 
will  in  our  own  countries.  Otherwise,  we  can 
not  teach  democracy.  Love,  knowledge  and 
democracy  are  all  stultified  while  poverty  re- 
mains among  us  as  our  hoariest  institution; 
and  while  that  persists,  we  can  not  preach  our 
message  successfully  in  any  of  its  forms. 

The  missionary  efforts  of  the  Christian 
world  have  not  been  more  successful,  because 
even  savages  divine  the  fact  that  we  do  not 
practise,  or  really  believe  our  Christianity — 
and  intelligent  non-Christians  know  it.  Why 
should  they  change  one  form  of  belief  for  an- 
other which  makes  no  promise  of  a  better  life 
in  this  world?  It  is  this  world  which  needs 
missionary  efforts — the  future  life  will  be  bet- 
ter served  than  otherwise,  I  suspect,  by  prop- 
erly serving  this.  We  must  show  the  nations  of 
the  world  that  our  ideals  may  be  lived  up  to  in 
city,  state,  nation  and  Christendom.  We  must 
be  able  to  hold  out  to  the  suffering  peoples 
who  sit  in  darkness — white  and  colored — a  re- 
demption from  their  sufferings  in  this  world. 

24* 


THE  WHITE  MAN'S  BURDEN 

We  shall  need  to  do  greatly,  and  dare  greatly, 
within  our  own  borders  if  we  are  to  do  that— 
and  such  is  our  first  task. 

In  the  meantime,  and  after,  a  different  sort 
of  missionarying  must  go  on.  We  must  enlist 
recruits  from  the  great  intelligent  peoples— 
the  Japanese,  Hindu,  Chinese — they  must  help 
us  as  their  fitness  grows  with  ours.  The  white 
man's  burden  will  become  the  developed 
man's  burden.  Our  missionarying  will  reach 
every  nook  of  the  world,  white,  black,  brown 
and  yellow,  with  demonstration  stations  of 
right  living — the  living  of  the  full,  complex, 
complete,  civilized  life.  It  will  be  backed  by 
millions  of  money,  but  not  a  single  weapon. 
Where  their  manner  of  living  can  not  save 
them,  these  missionaries  will  refuse  safety. 
They  will  reject  the  protection  of  the  powers, 
and  punitive  expeditions  will  no  longer  refute 
the  truths  of  the  teachers  they  are  ostensibly 
sent  out  to  aid.  There  will  be  an  age  of  mar- 
tyrs. The  jungles  of  the  tropics  will  receive 
many  who  will  never  come  out.  But  if  the 
white  man's  burden  is  to  be  carried,  the 

249 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

knights  and  ladies  of  the  future  must  ride  by 
millions  into  dangers  greater  than  those  of 
Arthurian  romance. 

They  will  carry,  not  swords,  lances  and 
armor,  but  tools,  laboratories  and  libraries. 
They  will  seek  to  inspire,  not  to  control  or 
govern.  They  will  be  patient,  for  they  will 
know  that  a  century  is  but  a  moment  in  this 
great  game  into  which  they  are  sitting.  If 
they  are  killed,  they  will  die  unresistingly,  and 
others  will  take  their  places.  They  will  not 
ask  for  protection  or  retribution.  And  through 
this  sort  of  assumption  of  the  white  man's 
burden  will  the  world  be  redeemed,  and  the 
Kingdom  of  God  be  set  up — not  at  Jerusalem, 
but  over  all  the  earth.  Heaven  will  take  care 
of  itself,  when  people  live  these  principles. 

We  passengers  on  the  good  ship  Earth  have 
been  kept  apart,  have  quarreled  and  fought, 
have  ravaged  and  murdered  for  thousands  of 
years  because  we  could  not  agree  about  God! 

This  is  the  strangest  of  human  tragedies.  In 
the  oldest  of  known  books,  perhaps,  the  ques- 

250 


THE  WHITE  MAN'S  BURDEN 

tion  is  asked  "Canst  thou  by  searching  find 
out  God?"  The  implied  answer  is  that  the 
thing  can  not  be  done.  And  yet,  the  breech- 
clouted  savage  is  willing  to  bet  his  life  in  bat- 
tle on  the  wager  that  he  knows  all  about  God. 
It  is  one  of  the  first  things  he  thinks  he  abso- 
lutely knows.  Very  soon  after  he  has  mas- 
tered it,  however,  he  becomes  satisfied  that  the 
stars  and  the  moon  are  simple  things  which  he 
quite  fully  comprehends.  And  the  last  thing 
to  yield  to  civilized  man's  questioning  is  the 
soil  under  his  feet — save  one — the  soul  in  his 
own  body! 

So  it  is  that  the  lower  man  may  be  in  devel- 
opment, the  more  impossible  it  is  for  him  to 
comprehend  the  idea  of  a  universal  religion, 
or  to  assent  to  its  desirability.  To  the  savage, 
God  is  a  being  belonging  in  fee  simple  to  his 
tribe.  The  next  tribe  has  a  god  of  its  owrn, 
freely  conceded  to  be  a  god,  though  a  stranger. 
It  takes  a  mighty  march  of  mind  to  enable 
man  to  conceive  of  a  universal  religion, 
reached  by  diverse  ways,  through  develop- 
ments of  many  faiths. 

2511 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

And  yet,  either  by  right  or  wrong  methods, 
we  are  coming  into  view  of  such  a  develop- 
ment. A  learned  man  was  recently  asked  to 
write  for  a  New  York  publishing  house  a 
series  of  books  on  the  founders  of  the  great 
world's  religions — Jesus,  Buddha,  Confucius, 
Zoroaster,  Moses,  Mohammed.  In  discussing 
the  matter  he  expressed  the  view  that  we  have 
now  for  the  first  time  in  the  history  of  man 
reached  a  point  where  such  a  series  may  be  im- 
partially written.  "For  the  first  time,"  said 
he,  "such  a  series  may  be  given  the  world  in 
the  light  of  a  universal  philosophy  of  re- 
ligion." 

To  the  Christian  no  less  than  to  other  reli- 
gionists, the  idea  is  difficult.  Most  people  on 
the  earth  at  this  time  have  passed  the  stage  of 
believing  in  a  god  belonging  in  fee  simple  to 
the  tribe,  the  state  or  the  empire.  The  concep- 
tion has  mastered  the  world  that  God  is  God — 
universal,  omnipotent,  omnipresent.  This  is 
a  wonderful  advance  toward  a  universal  reli- 
gion— and  yet  there  is  something  in  it  that 
stands  in  the  way  of  religious  accord.  For 

252 


THE  WHITE  MAN'S  BURDEN 

each  religion  claims  to  be  based  on  some 
peculiarly  correct  and  authoritative  revelation 
of  God.  The  believer  therefore  is  filled  with 
the  faith  that  his  religion  is  the  only  true 
world  religion,  and  that  the  universal  religion 
can  come  by  no  means  save  the  complete  tri- 
umph of  his  faith.  The  Mohammedan  be- 
lieves this  no  less  devoutly  than  the  Christian 
— and  this  belief  is  stored  with  perils  to  the 
world. 

But  let  us  look  back  to  the  childhood  of 
many  of  us  when  our  parents  and  grandparents 
were  perfectly  sure  that  their  Christian  sect 
or  church  was  the  only  one  capable  of  saving 
souls  from  hell.  The  heathen  themselves  were 
no  worse  off  than  the  communicants  of  the 
little  church  which  held  aloft  its  wooden  spire 
or  cross  on  the  other  side  of  the  street.  These 
creeds  are  substantially  the  same  as  then,  but 
the  old  idea  of  God  as  the  property  in  fee  sim- 
ple of  one  denomination  has  vanished  with  the 
concept  of  God  as  the  property  in  fee  simple 
of  the  tribe.  Christians  have  come  to  think 
less  of  dogma,  and  more  of  love.  They  have 

253 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

drawn  nearer  to  one  another  by  rising  to  a 
common  plane. 

May  not  the  same  thing  take  place  with  the 
the  great  world's  faiths?  There  came  to  this 
country  in  1892  to  the  World's  Congress  of 
Religions — which  may  take  its  place  in  history 
as  the  first  definite  step  toward  world-wide 
religious  peace — many  of  the  more  tolerent 
spirits  of  the  non-Christian  faiths.  Among 
them  was  B.  Nagarkar,  a  Hindu,  who  looked 
like  a  prophet  and  talked  like  Saint  Paul.  He 
was  then,  and  for  aught  I  know  still  is,  the 
head  of  the  Brahmo-Somaj,  a  reform  religious 
body  of  India.  He  did  not  believe  in  caste, 
nor  inherited  uncleanness  or  damnation.  He 
did  not  believe  in  child  marriage.  He  was 
working  for  universal  education  and  perfect 
democracy.  He  wanted  for  the  Hindus  all  the 
benefits  of  science,  invention  and  progress.  He 
was  a  real  progressive.  His  church  uses  a 
ritual  in  which  are  collected  as  inspired  writ- 
ings, the  choicest  gems  of  the  holy  books  of 
India,  our  Old  and  New  Testaments,  the 
Koran,  the  Zoroastrian  and  Confucian  scrip- 

254 


THE  WHITE  MAN'S  BURDEN 

tures.  The  Brahmo-Somaj  is  a  religion  of  the 
Golden  Rule  and  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount, 
of  progress  and  enlightenment. 

Nagarkar's  creed  and  personality  would 
have  made  him  an  acceptable  pastor  for  al- 
most any  Unitarian  church,  and  he  was  not 
much  at  odds  with,  and  would  no  doubt  have 
been  admitted  to,  membership  in  some  de- 
nominations regarded  as  orthodox.  He  was  a 
deeply  religious  person — but  the  background 
of  his  faith  was  Hindu,  not  Christian.  Out  of 
this  background  he  had  emerged,  and  his 
church  with  him,  to  a  field  of  almost  common 
ground  with  the  great  mass  of  Christian 
thought. 

Are  there  not,  then,  uplands  of  the  soul,  on 
which  we  passengers  on  the  good  ship  Earth 
may  all  meet  and  commune  with  the  saints  of 
all  faiths?  May  it  not  be  that  God  is  moving 
through  such  faiths  as  the  Brahmo-Somaj  in 
the  Hindu  world,  and  the  Babists,  or  Bahaists 
in  Islam  to  abolish  caste,  intolerance  and  pov- 
erty? Bahaism  is  the  religion  of  a  Moham- 
medan sect  not  more  than  seventy-five  years 

2SS 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

old  which  seeks  to  establish  "Humanity  bound 
together  by  sympathy  and  unselfishness;  a 
world  in  which  there  is  neither  intolerance 
nor  war;  a  universal  religion  in  which  there 
shall  be  but  two  essentials — love  for  man  and 
love  for  God;  a  universal  language,  and  a 
universal  educational  system."  Here  is  an 
outgrowth  of  Mohammedanism  which  is 
Christian  in  everything  but  the  acknowledg- 
ment of  the  Godhead  in  Christ.  Its  acceptance 
by  the  Mohammedan  world  would  be  a  thing 
of  such  magnificent  promise  to  all  of  us  as  to 
be  beyond  description,  and  almost  beyond 
imagination. 

We  may  then  look  forward  to  the  end  of 
religious  enmities.  We  may  believe  in  a  good 
time  coming  when  Mohammedan,  Parsee, 
Hindu,  Shintoist,  Confucian  and  Christian 
will  feel  no  more  hatred  toward  one  another 
than  Methodist  and  Congregationalist  now  do. 
There  seems  to  be  a  pole  toward  which  all 
spiritual  compasses  tend  to  point — the  Pole 
of  Divine  Truth.  We  started  far,  far  away 
from  it,  back  in  the  long  ago,  when  the  huge 

256 


THE  WHITE  MAN'S  BURDEN 

air-ship  Earth  first  generated  the  insect  Man 
from  her  decks,  and  the  compasses  were 
deflected  from  the  pole  by  all  sorts  of  disturb- 
ances, but  we  have  been  struggling  up  nearer 
and  nearer  this  pole,  millions  and  millions 
of  us.  And  not  from  the  Christian  nations 
alone  do  these  spiritual  explorers  come, 
but  from  every  earthly  land  where  there  is  a 
soul  which  in  love  seeks  light.  Every  such 
case  develops  its  spiritual  Peary. 

And  as  we  win  nearer  to  truth,  we  draw  to- 
gether. We  see  one  another  more  clearly.  We 
find  less  to  quarrel  about.  We  find  more  in 
which  we  can  share.  After  the  exploring  souls 
press  the  rest  of  mankind.  We  dare  not  be- 
lieve that  any  jungle  holds  a  people  incapable 
of  redemption  by  this  quest  for  the  Holy  Grail. 

I  do  not  know  how  this  may  affect  the  wel- 
fare in  the  next  world  of  those  who  win  to  the 
plane  of  tolerance  and  sympathy  universal. 
That  is  a  thing  of  which  I  profess  to  know 
nothing.  But  what  a  difference  it  will  make 
in  this  world! 

Suppose  that  at  the  time  when  Alva  the 
257 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

Catholic  carried  fire  and  sword  through  Hol- 
land because  the  Dutch  did  not  believe  in  the 
Pope,  or  that  later  time  when  Maurice  of  Nas- 
sau, the  Protestant,  butchered  forty  thousand 
Dutch  because  they  did  not  believe  in  infant 
baptism,  the  religious  people  of  Europe  had 
been  as  good  Christians  as  Nagarkar  the  Hin- 
du, or  Abd-ul-Baha  the  Mohammedan — what 
a  difference  it  would  have  made! 

There  has  been  progress.    Even  Christianity 
is  not  what  it  used  to  be. 


CHAPTER  XXIII 

THE  UNITED  STATES  OF  THE  WORLD 

ONCE  more  we  have  worked  our  way 
through  the  ocean  of  thought  to  the 
vision  of  a  time  when  there  shall  be  no  more 
of  isolation  among  the  groups  of  people  who 
make  up  the  passenger  list  of  the  good  ship 
Earth.  We  asked  the  question  once,  "Why 
not  manage  the  earth  as  a  unit?"  and  we  de- 
cided that  even  though  the  Martians  may  be 
able  to  lay  out  their  whole  planet,  and  ditch 
it  as  a  farmer  ditches  a  field,  our  field,  the 
deck  room  of  the  good  ship  Earth,  is  still  in 
too  many  separate  and  hostile  hands. 

But  we  have  now  glimpsed  the  vision  of  a 
world  religion.  Can  we  not  see  the  picture  of 
a  world  government — a  United  States  of  the 
World,  in  which  there  shall  be  no  more  of 
exclusiveness  in  travel  or  trade  between  Ger- 
many or  Japan  and  these  states  of  ours,  than 

259 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

there  now  is  between  Iowa  and  Missouri  or 
New  York  and  Illinois? 

It  is  a  divine  vision!  But  it  is  not  a  new 
one.  The  poets  are  men  who  see  more  deeply, 
and  speak  more  truly  than  the  rest  of  us,  and 
are  therefore  prophets.  It  is  to  Tennyson  the 
Prophet  that  we  must  go  for  the  best  expres- 
sion of  this  old  vision. 

"For  I  dipt  into  the  future,  far  as  human  eye 

could  see, 

Saw  the  Vision  of  the  world,  and  all  the  won- 
der that  would  be; 

"Saw  the  heavens  fill  with  commerce,  argo- 
sies of  magic  sails, 

Pilots  of  the  purple  twilight,  dropping  down 
with  costly  bales." 

And  remember,  Prophet  Tennyson  wrote 
this  about  the  heavens  filling  with  commerce, 
and  the  pilots  dropping  down  with  costly 
bales,  before  Langley  built  his  first  aeroplane, 
or  Zeppelin  his  dirigible,  or  the  Wright 
brothers  rode  their  first  glider  at  Dayton.  And 
Tennyson,  in  his  dip  into  the  future,  saw  the 
horrors  of  aerial  warfare. 

260 


THE  UNITED  WORLD 

"Heard  the  heavens  fill  with  shouting,  and 

there  rain'd  a  ghastly  dew 
From  the  nations'  airy  navies  grappling  in 
the  central  blue." 

But  he  did  not  stop  here.  He  looked  on  to 
the  development  of  peace  from  war, 

"Till  the  war-drum  throbb'd  no  longer,  and 

the  battle-flags  were  furl'd 
In  the  Parliament  of  man,  the  Federation  of 
the  world!" 

Is  this  anything  more  than  the  baseless 
fabric  of  a  vision?  Will  there  ever  be  any 
such  a  thing  as  a  parliament  of  man,  a  federa- 
tion of  the  world?  I  believe  that  there  must 
be  in  the  fulness  of  time. 

To  be  sure,  there  was  never  a  time  when 
there  seemed  less  prospect  of  the  Universal 
Government  Merger  than  now.  Great  Britain 
still  holds  sway  over  her  uncounted  millions 
of  souls  and  scores  of  nations — by  force  rather 
than  by  accord,  save  in  the  case  of  her  English- 
speaking  colonies.  Every  great  power  grasps 
its  sheaf  of  subject  peoples  who  hate  their  con- 
querors— and  is  reaching  for  more.  Italy 

261 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

has  just  snapped  a  mouthful  from  the  flank  of 
staggering  Turkey  in  Tripolitania.  Bulgaria, 
Servia,  Montenegro  and  Greece  are  eating 
into  the  vitals  of  the  same  decadent  power. 
Austria  stands  ready  to  leap  upon  Servia  in 
anger  at  the  stealing  of  a  bone  in  the  form  of 
an  Adriatic  port.  Russia  is  placing  armies  in 
the  field  to  daunt  Austria.  Germany  clenches 
her  mailed  fist  in  support  of  Franz-Joseph. 
France  sharpens  her  knife  for  that  portion  of 
Germany's  back  called  Alsace-Lorraine.  Great 
Britain  keeps  up  steam  in  her  mighty  pack 
of  dreadnaughts  in  case  Russia  and  France 
need  aid.  Japan  and  Russia  are  gradually 
gnawing  into  the  huge  passive  bulk  of  China, 
which  stirs,  and  sends  out  a  new  army  for  the 
defense  of  Outer  Mongolia.  Mexico  and  the 
Spanish-  and  Portuguese-American  repub- 
lics, sheltered  under  the  Monroe  Doctrine, 
look  upon  their  mighty  protector,  remember 
the  attacks  on  Mexico  and  the  Philippines, 
and  wonder  whether  the  Yankee  pigs  are  not 
more  like  wolves  protecting  sheep  until  a  time 
of  hunger.  It  is  nearing  Christmas,  1913,  as 

262 


THE  UNITED  WORLD 

this  is  written — and  when  was  there  ever  ap- 
parently less  of  peace  on  earth,  and  good  will 
to  men? 

The  federation  of  the  world  will  not  come 
save  through  the  need  of  it.  Is  there  any  need 
to  be  satisfied  by  federation? 

Yes,  there  is  as  much  need  of  world-federa- 
tion now,  as  there  was  of  colony-federation  in 
America  in  1775.  There  are  many  world 
problems  that  can  not  be  solved  save  through 
it.  There  are  world  slums,  which  the  advanced 
nations  may  be  obliged  to  clean  up  and  purify. 
There  are  world  pest-holes  which  the  world 
may  wish  to  make  sanitary,  or  to  isolate.  There 
are  areas  of  darkness  on  which  the  world  may 
find  it  necessary  to  turn  the  light.  It  is  only 
because  of  our  home  problems  and  their  press- 
ing nature  that  we  have  found  it  possible  to 
delay  so  long  a  world  movement  for  the  per- 
fecting of  society  in  the  steerage  and  the  fore- 
castle of  the  good  ship  Earth. 

Moreover,  there  are  questions  of  the  divi- 
sion of  the  lands,  and  the  natural  resources  of 
the  Earth.  The  population  is  very  unevenly 

263 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

distributed  over  the  decks — and  much  of  the 
best  lands  is  unused.  Suppose  that  Brazil  fails 
to  reclaim  and  populate  the  great  Amazon 
Basin — is  not  the  rest  of  the  world,  especially 
the  over-populated  portions,  interested  in  hav- 
ing Brazil's  delinquency  remedied?  Shall 
half  the  good  deck  room  of  the  good  ship 
Earth  go  half  used  because  of  one  or  two 
nations'  lack  of  energy  or  initiative? 

Suppose  the  world's  supply  of  potash  is 
finally  found  to  be  localized  in  Germany,  and 
the  phosphorus  in  the  United  States,  as  seems 
to  be  the  case.  Suppose  that  the  iron  mines 
and  the  coal  mines  also  fall  into  the  hands  of 
one,  two,  or  three  nations.  And  suppose  these 
nations,  or  as  many  as  control  them,  either 
allow  them  to  be  exploited  by  private  owners 
or  refuse  their  product  to  the  world  on  just 
terms,  or  take  too  much  for  themselves,  or 
allow  the  priceless  heritage  of  all  the  peoples 
of  the  earth  to  be  wasted.  Have  not  the 
wronged  peoples  a  right  to  be  heard  in  pro- 
test? Will  there  not  be  need  of  a  federation 
of  the  world  to  deal  with  these  problems? 

264 


THE  UNITED  WORLD 

Already  there  is  growing  up  a  thing  never 
known  until  this  era  of  ours — a  world  public- 
opinion.  The  world  will  never  be  federated 
in  government,  until  it  is  federated  in  thought 
— save  by  tyranny. 

Consider  two  only  of  the  great  federating 
tendencies.  The  Socialist  party  is  the  same 
party  everywhere.  It  seeks  to  build  up  in 
every  nation,  .another  nation  of  working  peo- 
ple, and  to  bring  about  a  condition  of  indus- 
trial democracy  in  which  all  will  be  working 
people.  Its  growing  power  makes  its  world- 
wide success  a  thing  to  be  regarded  as  far  out- 
side the  bounds  of  impossibility.  Its  triumph 
would  be  in  itself  a  federation  of  the  world. 
The  other  great  radical  school  of  thought,  not 
less  powerful  that  Socialism  in  its  influence 
on  affairs,  is  the  school  of  the  Georgians  or 
single-taxers.  This  school  bases  it  propa- 
ganda on  the  principle  that  this  huge  Zeppelin 
the  Earth  is  in  justice  common  property,  and 
that  rent  is  the  wedge  that  separates  the  priv- 
ileged from  the  unprivileged.  The  triumph 
of  this  school  of  thought  would  at  once  estab- 

265 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

lish  a  federation  of  the  world,  and  could  not 
fail  to  lead  to  a  listing  of  our  world  proper- 
ties, a  division  of  our  natural  resources  on 
lines  of  recognized  principles,  and  some  cen- 
tral body  with  power  to  care  for  the  common 
property  of  the  race,  and  administer  it  for 
the  common  good. 

Such  a  federation  would  draw  the  line  be- 
tween those  activities  which  are  national,  con- 
tinental or  planetary  functions  and  those 
which  are  better  performed  locally,  and 
would  usher  in  an  era  of  local  self-govern- 
ment in  local  affairs.  It  would  be  consistent 
with  perfect  liberty  and  seems  essential  to  it 


CHAPTER  XXIV, 

A  FEDERATION  PROBLEM 

WHEN  the  United  States  of  the  World 
is  organized — as  it  must  be  some  day— 
the  federation  will  find  a  great  many  problems 
clamoring  for  solution.  There  will  be  de- 
manded at  once,  not  the  Syndicate  of  Intellect 
that  Kipling  suggests  as  the  world  govern- 
ment, but  a  zodiac  of  constellations  of  human 
stars,  each  constellation  a  commission  for  the 
study  of  its  own  great  series  of  questions. 

And  I  think  the  first  great  commission  will 
be  appointed  to  determine  what  shall  be  done 
to  stop  the  world-wide  waste  of  coal. 

This  commission  will  indict  the  state  of 
Pennsylvania  as  a  criminal  against  the  world 
for  allowing  the  great  coke  companies  of  the 
Connellsville  region  to  waste  all  the  gas,  all 
the  tar,  all  the  heat  and  all  the  fertilizer  in 
making  coke.  It  will  indict  the  state  of  West 

267 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

Virginia  as  a  criminal  against  the  world  for 
allowing  the  fuel  gas  to  be  wasted.  It  will  in- 
dict all  the  gas  producing  states  for  the  same 
crime  against  the  people  of  the  world,  and  all 
the  coal  mining  states  for  allowing  the  waste  of 
one-half  to  three-fourths  the  coal  in  mining. 
It  will  indict  as  criminals  against  the  world's 
supply  of  coal  all  those  states,  communities, 
corporations  and  individuals  which  allow 
black  smoke  to  escape  from  flues  and  chim- 
neys poisoning  the  atmosphere  and  destroying 
property — and  wasting  a  very  considerable 
percentage  of  the  coal  burned.  It  will  indict 
as  criminals  against  the  world's  welfare  every- 
body everywhere  who  is  responsible  for  the 
crime  of  burning  coal  in  steam-engines  when 
from  two-thirds  to  one-half  of  the  fuel  could 
be  saved  by  throwing  away  the  steam-engine, 
getting  better  educated  operators  and  con- 
verting the  fuel  into  producer  gas  for  use  in 
gas-engines.  All  these  things  it  would  do  to- 
day, if  there  were  a  federation  of  the  world, 
on  the  strength  of  the  knowledge  we  now 
possess. 

268 


A  FEDERATION  PROBLEM 

Of  all  these  crimes  we  are  now  guilty,  and 
we  know  it.  Our  only  excuse  is  that,  after  all, 
the  shortage  of  coal  is  possibly  only  a  scien- 
tist's chimera ;  that,  anyhow,  the  crisis  will  not 
come  until  after  we  are  dead — and  that  money 
must  be  made  in  this  life  if  at  all. 

God  said,  "Let  there  be  light"— and  there 
was  light.  And  the  voyage  of  the  good  ship 
Earth  was  so  ordered  that  millions  of  years 
ago  when  the  air  was  full  of  carbon,  great 
swamps  existed  in  which  grew  huge  plants 
which,  through  light  and  heat,  took  the  carbon 
from  the  air  and  by  reason  of  the  repeated 
flooding  and  draining  of  these  fields,  coal  was 
made.  So  coal  is  the  light  of  millions  of  years 
ago  stored  in  the  bunkers  of  the  good  ship 
Earth.  It  is  also  light  spiritual,  and  light 
intellectual.  It  is  civilization.  By  means  of 
its  innumerable  uses  it  is  God's  chief  present 
agency  for  carrying  over  to  us  in  world  prog- 
ress the  light  commanded  "in  the  beginning." 

The  first  great  commission  on  the  world's 
coal  supply  will  find  immense  beds  left  in 
the  bunkers  of  the  good  ship  Earth.  In  Eu- 

269 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

rope,  aside  from  the  greatest  mines,  coal  is 
produced  in  France,  Austria,  Hungary,  Spain, 
Russia,  Holland,  Bosnia,  Rumania,  Servia, 
Italy  and  Sweden.  But  in  none  of  them  is 
there  a  supply  known  to  exist  which  is  more 
than  will  be  needed  in  the  nation  possessing 
the  mines,  if  we  allow  for  progress  and  devel- 
opment in  the  future.  Of  those  named,  Rus- 
sia has  the  greatest  supply,  but  the  mighty 
development  of  Russia  under  the  democracy 
and  justice  which  the  world  hopes  to  see  the 
Russian  people  win,  will  call  for  the  local  use 
of  every  ton  of  coal  under  Russian  soil. 

Africa  is  poorly  supplied  with  coal.  The 
climatic  conditions  when  the  coal  was  laid 
down  do  not  seem  to  have  been  favorable  for 
its  formation  in  the  equatorial  regions.  There 
is  a  coal  industry  in  the  Transvaal,  in  Natal 
and  in  Cape  Colony;  but  a  developed  Africa 
will  draw  on  the  rest  of  the  world  for  most  of 
its  coal,  so  far  as  can  now  be  seen. 

Similar  conditions  exist  in  Australia.  There 
is  a  coal  industry  in  almost  every  province  of 
Australia,  and  in  both  Tasmania  and  New 

270 


A  FEDERATION  PROBLEM 

Zealand ;  but  there  is  no  reason  to  believe  that 
there  is  more  than  the  Australasia  of  the  future 
will  need. 

India  has  a  good  deal,  but  probably  needs 
it  all.  Mexico  has  about  a  six  months'  supply 
for  the  United  States  if  it  were  all  taken  out 
next  year — 300,000,000  tons.  She  will  need  it 
all  and  more.  Brazil  has  a  good  deal  of  rather 
poor  coal.  There  is  no  reason  to  expect  a  sur- 
plus there.  Chili  mines  less  than  a  million 
tons  a  year,  and  has  no  great  supply.  In  Vene- 
zuela and  Colombia  coal  exists  in  small  quan- 
tities in  scattered  localities.  Peru  has  exten- 
sive deposits  of  both  anthracite  and  bitumi- 
nous— which  are  worth  looking  into  by  the 
coal  commission  of  the  federation  of  the 
world.  Aside  from  these,  South  America 
seems  barren  of  coal,  save  for  small  deposits 
of  poor  fuel. 

The  world's  supply,  therefore,  must  come 
from  North  America,  China,  Great  Britain, 
Belgium,  Germany  and  localities  mentioned 
above  which  can  not  long  furnish  surpluses. 

One  authority  says  that  at  the  rate  of  min- 
271 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

ing  in  1900  the  fields  of  Central  France,  Bohe- 
mia, Saxony  and  North  England  would  be 
worked  oXit  in  one  hundred  to  two  hundred 
years;  the  other  British  fields,  and  those  of 
Waldenburg-Schaftzlar  and  North  France 
might  last  two  hundred  and  fifty  years;  the 
mines  of  Belgium,  Aachen,  and  Westphalia 
were  rated  good  for  six  hundred  to  eight  hun- 
dred years,  and  those  of  Upper  Silesia  for  a 
thousand  years.  But  this  does  not  take  into  ac- 
count the  startling  acceleration  of  consump- 
tion going  on  all  over  the  world.  Neither 
does  it  reckon  on  the  fact  that  as  one  district 
fails,  the  demand  will  rest  on  the  others,  until 
the  last  to  go  will  be  mined  with  a  fierceness 
never  seen  before.  The  last  of  a  field  plows 
off  fast. 

As  for  the  American  supply,  the  Geological 
Survey  has  reversed  itself  and  passed  from  a 
position  of  extreme  pessimism  since  Campbell 
indicated  the  exhaustion  of  our  fields  in  one 
hundred  and  fifty  years,  to  that  of  extreme 
optimism  in  a  recent  report  in  which  it  is 
pointed  out  that  at  the  end  of  1910  there 

272 


A  FEDERATION  PROBLEM 

remained  in  the  ground  a  supply  equal  to 
four  thousand  times  the  amount  mined  that 
year.  This  too  fails  to  reckon  on  the  ever- 
increasing  demand  which  will  make  the  con- 
sumption of  1910  look  small  within  ten  years; 
nor  on  the  concentration  of  the  world's  demand 
on  the  good  mines  when  the  smaller  fields  are 
worked  out. 

The  last  great  field  to  be  considered  is  that 
of  China.  The  province  of  Shansi  is  one  vast 
coal  field,  practically  untouched,  both  an- 
thracite and  bituminous,  and  covering  30,000 
square  miles.  Some  years  ago  the  Baron  von 
Richthofen  said  that  China  had  enough  coal 
to  last  the  entire  world  several  thousand 
years.  Probably  the  baron  had  not  considered 
when  he  made  the  statement  the  manner  in 
which  we  are  speeding  up  in  coal  consumption, 
but  there  seems  to  be  no  doubt  that  China  has 
the  greatest  coal  fields  in  the  world.  A  free, 
educated,  justly-organized  China  may  find  in 
these  great  mines  a  means  whereby  the  Chi- 
nese can  redeem  themselves  from  poverty,  and 
the  "sordid  round  of  getting  and  begetting"  of 

273 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

which  Ross  speaks  as  now  constituting  the 
Chinese  life. 

More  mines  will  be  discovered — many 
more — and  more  uses  for  coal.  The  coal 
commission  of  the  good  ship  Earth  will, 
however,  claim  every  ton  of  it  as  the  property 
of  the  people  of  the  world,  and  not  that  of  any 
nation,  or  state,  or  corporation,  or  private 
owner,  or  class  of  private  owners.  And  it  will 
ordain  that  useless  and  wasteful  consumption 
be  stopped  everywhere. 

The  coal  in  the  bunkers  of  the  good  ship 
Earth  is  a  product  made  millions  of  years 
ago  by  the  radiant  energy  of  the  sun — light 
and  heat — acting  through  the  life-force  in 
plants.  Once  used,  it  is  gone  forever.  For 
the  carboniferous  era  can  not  return  to  the 
earth — or  if  it  could,  it  would  exterminate  the 
human  race. 

But  there  is  a  way  to  utilize  the  radiant 
energy  of  the  sun  coming  to  us  day  by  day. 
And  yet  we  mostly  waste  it.  It  is  as  if  a  man 
with  an  income  half  sufficient  for  his  living, 

274 


A  FEDERATION  PROBLEM 

should  throw  it  away  while  drawing  on  a 
bank-account  to  which  no  deposits  could  ever 
be  added. 

Remember  that  in  dealing  with  this  matter 
of  coal  we  are  considering  force.  Force  must 
be  used  up  in  every  human  product.  Force  is 
another  name  for  work.  Coal  is  another  name 
for  work.  It  does  what  would  else  have  to 
be  done  by  man  or  beast.  And  as  coal  is  more 
powerful  than  all  the  men  and  beasts  in  the 
world,  it  does  work  that  could  not  otherwise 
be  done  at  all.  Our  bridges,  railways,  sky- 
scrapers, Panama  Canals,  factories  and  mills 
are  greater  than  the  works  of  all  the  other  ages 
—notwithstanding  the  Pyramids  and  Karnak, 
the  Colosseum  and  the  Parthenon — just  be- 
cause we  have  coal  to  do  the  work  for  us. 
Those  old  works  were  done  by  slaves,  and  we 
do  ours  with  free  labor — just  because  we  have 
the  coal.  Well  it  will  be  for  us  when  we  have 
a  federation  of  the  world  to  find  out  how 
much  coal  we  have,  and  to  see  to  it  that  it  is 
saved,  and  not  wasted. 

All  the  while  we  have  been  burning  coal  so 
275 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

fiercely,  the  sun  has  been  ready  to  do  more 
than  half  the  coal  work  by  the  force  of 
yesterday's  sunlight,  instead  of  that  of  the 
carboniferous  age.  The  sun  is  a  giant,  which 
lifts  millions  of  tons  of  water  every  day 
to  a  height  of  thousands  of  feet  in  the  air 
through  evaporation  from  the  oceans.  This 
water  floats  out  over  the  land,  and  falls  in 
rain  and  snow.  Much  of  it  falls  on  mountains 
and  highlands,  from  which  it  runs  in  rapid 
streams.  For  ages  man  has  used  the  power 
so  stored  in  water,  to  turn  mills  and  do  some 
work;  but  within  recent  years  we  have  found 
out  ways  by  which  we  may  turn  it  into  elec- 
tricity, and — wonder  of  wonders! — from  elec- 
tricity back  again  to  heat  and  to  light  as  of 
the  sun. 

This  descending  water  is  called  "white  coal" 
because  it  will  do  almost  everything  that  coal 
can  do.  Indeed,  a  great  deal  of  the  coal  we 
burn  is  turned  into  electricity,  by  a  process 
so  wasteful  that  more  than  nine-tenths  of  the 
power  of  coal  is  lost  in  the  process!  Thus 

276 


A  FEDERATION  PROBLEM 

far,  the  invention  of  the  dynamo  and  electric 
motor,  instead  of  being  a  means  of  saving  coal, 
has  actually  increased  its  consumption  and 
accelerated  its  waste. 

The  coal  beds  are  our  bank-account  on 
which  new  deposits  are  never  made;  and  the 
water-power  is  the  daily  income  capable  of 
sufficing  for  more  than  half  our  needs — which 
we  waste,  waste,  and  all  the  time  waste! 

There  is  nearly  3,000,000  horse-power  con- 
stantly wasting  down  the  slopes  of  the  moun- 
tains of  our  eastern  states.  We  are  giving 
away  the  sites  to  power  companies  who  will 
claim  the  privilege  of  making  future  genera- 
tions pay  for  this  work  of  God's  sun ;  but  we 
as  a  people  are  not  developing  the  power. 
These  Appalachian  streams,  if  dammed  and 
furnished  with  all  wheels  it  would  pay  to  in- 
stall, for  those  portions  of  the  year  when  the 
current  is  strong,  would  give  us  an  output  of 
6,000,000  horse-power,  worth  a  hundred  mil- 
lions of  dollars  a  year.  By  storage  reservoirs 
to  hold  back  the  flood  waters  we  might  not 

277 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

only  prevent  most  of  our  terrible  floods,  but 
we  should  increase  this  output  of  horse-power 
many  fold. 

We  do  build  dams,  but  we  are  guilty  of  the 
incredible  crime  of  refusing  to  utilize  the 
power  our  own  publicly-owned  dams  develop. 
The  dams  the  United  States  government  has 
already  built  for  the  benefit  of  navigation  now 
waste,  even  in  low  water,  power  which  might 
turn  wheels  to  the  enormous  amount  of 
1,600,000  horse-power;  and  they  might  prof- 
itably during  half  the  year  send  it  out  at  the 
rate  of  4,000,000  horse-power  per  year.  There 
are  grave  doubts  as  to  whether  or  not  under 
the  Constitution  of  the  United  States  we  have 
the  legal  right  to  generate  and  distribute  profit 
from  our  own  rivers  even  though  we  may 
build  the  dams!  But  fortunately  the  Consti- 
tution is  not  a  cosmic  fact. 

The  New  York,  Pennsylvania  and  New 
England  water-power  is  not  included  in  the 
above  estimate,  and  is  enormous.  All  the  Great 
Lakes  states  have  tremendous  power  possibili- 

278 


A  FEDERATION  PROBLEM 

ties.  The  Pacific  and  Rocky  Mountain  states 
have  it  in  still  greater  volume.  The  rivers 
of  Canada  offer  power  in  quantities  simply  in- 
calculable and  inconceivable.  Mexico,  South 
America  and  Asia— no  one  has  even  esti- 
mated the  water-power  available  to  the  pas- 
sengers on  the  good  ship  Earth  in  these  re- 
gions. Wherever  the  rivers  of  Africa — the 
Nile,  the  Kongo,  the  Niger,  the  Zambesi- 
flow  over  the  mountain  rim  of  the  dark 
continent,  there  are  cataracts  wherewith  to 
light  it— light  it  in  myriad  ways. 

We  are  using  power — counting  coal-power 
also_in  the  United  States  at  the  rate  of  less 
than  20,000,000  horse-power.  There  is  avail- 
able water-power  running  to  waste  to  turn 
every  wheel  of  this.  There  is  water-power 
running  to  waste  to  turn  every  wheel  now 
turned  by  steam  in  all  the  world.  The  power 
sites  are  not  always  near  where  the  wheels  are 
located.  In  many  cases  they  are  too  far  from 
the  centers  of  population  to  be  transmitted 
profitably  by  our  present-day  methods.  But 

279 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

we  shall  learn  more  about  transmission.  There 
are  some  uses  for  which  coal  is  essential,  and 
always  will  be. 

But  the  age  of  white  coal  is  a  future  cer- 
tainty. The  captains  who  rule  the  good  ship 
Earth  in  the  days  of  the  United  States  of  the 
World,  will  gradually  cause  the  load  of  our 
increasing  work  to  be  laid  on  water,  and  taken 
from  coal.  We  shall  use  daily  the  sun-energy 
of  this  year,  and  save  our  lessening  deposit  of 
the  sunlight  of  the  carboniferous  age.  Copper 
highways  will  gridiron  the  world  for  the 
accommodation  of  the  current  from  the  wilds 
where  the  cataracts  are  found.  Population 
will  shift  slowly  from  the  coal  regions  to  the 
power  sites.  The  great  manufacturing  cities 
of  the  future  will  be  built  in  the  Alps,  about 
the  reservoirs  of  the  Appalachians,  along  the 
slopes  of  the  Andes,  the  Himalayas  and  the 
Sierras — wherever  power  and  raw  materials 
can  be  bought  together. 

It  will  be  a  cleaner  sweeter  age  than  the 
age  of  coal.  It  will  express  in  all  its  life  the 
science  which  will  be  the  universally  dis- 

280 


A  FEDERATION  PROBLEM 

tributed  wealth  of  all  minds.  After  a  while 
the  burning  of  coal  will  be  confined  to  those 
uses  which  are  not  to  be  served  by  electricity. 
The  depletion  of  the  coal  beds  will  be  so  re- 
duced that  their  exhaustion  can  be  regarded 
as  indefinitely  postponed.  Such  additional 
fuel  supplies  as  gas,  wood,  petroleum,  alcohol 
and  peat  will  be  eked  out  by  science  so  as  to 
make  the  fuel  problem  less  and  less  important. 
Means  may  be  found  to  get  heat  directly  from 
fuel  by  chemical  reactions,  and  thus  save  the 
waste  in  burning.  The  rays  of  the  sun,  the 
waves  and  tides  of  the  sea,  the  winds  and  even 
the  interior  heat  of  the  earth  may  finally  be 
available  for  the  work  of  the  world,  in  the 
days  when  the  captains  of  the  good  ship 
Earth  shall  ordain  the  age  of  white  coal,  under 
the  claim  for  the  people  of  the  Earth  of  the 
right  to  and  sway  over  every  watt  of  power 
which  the  sloping  decks  of  their  ship  may  be 
capable  of  generating  from  the  rains  of 
heaven, 


CHAPTER  XXV 

THE  PREVENTION  OF  FLOODS 

NOTHING  could  be  more  beyond  con- 
trol, to  the  mind  of  the  primitive  man, 
than  a  flood.  The  imagination  has  selected 
the  flood  as  the  most  ineluctable  of  all  catas- 
trophes. It  visualizes  a  drowned  world  as  the 
penalty  of  sin;  and  Noah,  representative  of 
the  saved,  finds  safety,  not  in  controlling  the 
waters  but  in  yielding  to  them. 

Floods  seem  to  defy  resistance.  Fires  may 
be  fought,  but  floods  come  straight  from  the 
hand  of  the  Almighty.  When  the  windows 
of  heaven  are  once  opened,  civilized  man 
dwindles  again  to  the  feeble  stature  of  a  sav- 
age. Paris,  the  center  of  civilization  on  board 
the  good  ship  Earth,  tamely  submits  when 
the  Seine  leaves  his  banks.  In  the  Lower  Mis- 
sissipi  Valley  American  civilization  stands 
by  helpless  when  the  Father  of  Waters  as- 

282 


THE  PREVENTION  OF  FLOODS 

sumes  a  father's  prerogative  of  chastisement. 
The  patient  Chinese,  bowing  to  the  power  of 
the  flood,  call  the  Hwang-Ho  the  "Ungovern- 
able". For  four  thousand  years  they  have  been 
righting  the  floods,  always  failing  to  govern 
the  "Ungovernable",  but  always  trying  again, 
and  again,  and  again,  after  every  failure,  with 
a  persistence  which  is  both  sublime  and  touch- 
ing. The  "Great  Yu",  4,200  years  ago,  filled 
a  position  a  good  deal  like  that  of  the  head  of 
the  corps  of  engineers  of  the  United  States 
army — only  Yu  had  the  Hwang-Ho  to  fight. 
He  was  a  great  engineer  when  our  ancestors 
were  savages.  Greece  and  Rome  have  risen 
and  fallen,  the  Germanic  races  have  spread  in 
savagery  over  Europe  and  developed  civiliza- 
tion, the  Moslems  have  in  successive  waves 
almost  swamped  Caucasian  civilization, 
America  has  been  discovered  and  peopled,  the 
Moslem  wave  has  receded,  the  summit  of  pros- 
perity and  activity  in  all  the  world's  history 
has  been  reached  in  a  continent  which  was  un- 
known to  the  civilized  world  3,500  years  after 
the  "Great  Yu"  was  appointed  superintendent 

283 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

of  works  in  China  in  charge  of  river  improve- 
ment— and  still  the  Hwang-Ho  is  called  "Chi- 
na's Sorrow",  "the  Scourge  of  the  Sons  of 
Han"  and  like  names,  by  the  wonderful  peo- 
ple who  live  so  simply  and  laboriously  along 
its  banks. 

As  recently  as  1898  the  "Ungovernable" 
devastated  thousands  of  villages  and  cities.  In 
1877  it  destroyed  a  million  people — and  these 
are  only  some  of  the  most  dreadful  paroxysms 
of  "China's  Sorrow". 

Floods  grow  more  and  more  dreadful  as  the 
deck  room  on  the  good  ship  Earth  becomes 
more  crowded.  The  fiercer  struggle  for  sus- 
tenance forces  people  to  live  on  the  rich  lands 
which  are  below  high-water  level.  The  Amer- 
ican people  are  forced  upon  the  Mississippi 
bottoms  by  necessities  similar  to  those  which 
have  for  thousands  of  years  driven  the  Chinese 
not  only  to  the  banks  of  her  rivers  and  canals, 
regardless  of  safety,  but  actually  out  upon  her 
waters  by  millions. 

Those  who  are  directly  imperiled  by  floods 
are  the  poor — the  rich  live  on  the  high  lands 

284 


THE  PREVENTION  OF  FLOODS 

— and  they  can  always  move.  Our  greatest 
floods  are  small  in  destructive  power  com- 
pared to  those  of  other  lands,  simply  because 
we  have  not  so  many  poor,  and  have  not  uti- 
lized our  river  bottoms  so  completely.  Unless 
something  is  done  to  control  floods,  we  shall 
gradually  reach  the  state  of  China — a  state  of 
things  in  which  millions  of  people  will  be 
drowned  annually  in  the  inundations  of  the 
Ohio,  the  Missouri-Mississipi,  the  Tennessee, 
the  Sacramento,  the  Alabama  Rivers,  and  the 
streams  flowing  across  the  Atlantic  coastal 
plain  from  the  Appalachian  Mountains. 

Nothing  is  more  pitiful  than  a  city  or  a 
farm  devastated  by  a  flood.  A  fire  is  at  least 
clean  and  definite  in  its  conclusion.  A  flood 
is  most  endurable  at  its  height.  When  it 
recedes,  its  misery  grows.  The  sodden  houses, 
the  clothing  and  bedding  spread  out  to  dry, 
the  household  goods  desecrated,  the  house  ren- 
dered unwholesome  for  occupancy,  the  furni- 
ture falling  apart,  the  disease,  the  fields 
stripped  of  crops  and  perhaps  of  soil,  or 
strewn  with  sand  and  gravel  from  the  hills — a 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

flood  brings  the  very  abomination  of  desola- 
tion. 

And  yet,  most  floods  might  be  controlled  by 
modern  engineering,  directed  with  all  the  en- 
ergy of  a  great  people.  There  is  reason  to  be- 
lieve that  what  China  needs  more  than  any- 
thing else,  now,  is  a  modern  successor  to  the 
Great  Yu.  This  man  would  command  the  re- 
sources of  all  China  to  reclaim  the  whole  Chi- 
nese lowland  from  the  danger  of  floods — and 
in  doing  so,  he  would  make  room  for  millions 
of  people  to  live  in  plenty. 

Each  river  system  is  a  problem  in  itself,  as 
far  as  floods  are  concerned.  The  rivers  of 
China  rage  in  freshet  and  dwindle  in  drought 
for  the  same  reasons  that  cause  all  the  streams 
that  fall  into  the  gulf  east  of  Texas,  all  that 
fall  into  the  Mississippi  from  the  east,  and  all 
that  empty  into  the  Atlantic  to  do  the  same 
things — because  of  the  destruction  of  the  for- 
ests on  their  headwaters.  The  deforested  hills 
of  China  are  desolate,  and  breed  floods.  The 
deforested  hills  of  New  England,  and  the  mid- 
dle and  south  Atlantic  states  are  going  the 

286 


THE  PREVENTION  OF  FLOODS 

same  way.  Water  runs  off  a  plush-covered 
seat  or  a  forested  hill  or  mountain  slowly.  It 
runs  from  a  varnished  seat  or  a  bare  hill  or 
mountain  rapidly.  Where  man  has  stripped 
the  forest-plush  from  the  high  portions  of  the 
decks  of  the  good  ship  Earth,  the  rainfall 
rushes  roaring  down  into  the  scuppers,  called 
valleys,  bringing  destruction  to  those  who  live 
down  there. 

When  we  become  really  civilized,  we  shall 
reclothe  the  mountains  which  our  need  and 
our  greed  have  stripped  of  their  forest  cover. 
This  will  in  itself  stop  the  worst  of  the  floods 
—and  furnish  us  with  the  timber  we  shall  so 
sorely  need.  In  this  way  can  some  of  the  "Un- 
governables"  be  governed. 

Irrigation  will  call  for  more  and  more  of  the 
water  which  now  wastes  down  in  floods.  The 
Roosevelt  Dam  in  Arizona  is  an  instance. 
Never  again  will  a  drop  of  flood  water  pass 
out  of  that  valley.  Every  drop  will  be  used 
for  the  crops,  and  will  seep  slowly  back  into 
the  stream.  The  Yellowstone  in  Montana  will 
all  be  used  for  irrigation — and  so  of  many 

287 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

other  rivers.  If  the  Dakotas  and  Montana 
were  to  be  plowed  twenty  inches  deep,  scarcely 
a  tenth  of  the  water  which  now  goes  from 
them  to  swell  the  Missouri  would  flow  from 
the  soil.  It  would  sink  in — and  the  soil  needs 
that  deep  plowing. 

The  problem  of  the  Mississippi  floods  is 
largely  a  question  of  getting  rid  of  the  waters 
from  the  Ohio  and  its  branches.  Plans  have 
been  sketched  out  for  holding  back  these 
waters  in  a  great  system  of  reservoirs,  stretch- 
ing from  the  headwaters  of  the  Alleghany  to 
those  of  the  Tennessee.  Other  great  reservoirs 
are  possible  along  the  Upper  Mississippi — 
where,  indeed,  many  have  already  been  con- 
structed. "Water  conservation,"  says  Lyman 
E.  Cooley,  "demands  storage,  and  four  per 
cent,  to  six  per  cent,  of  the  area  in  reservoirs 
will  equalize  the  flow  of  streams.  By  fish 
culture  such  reservoirs  will  have  greater  value 
than  the  land  taken.  They  add  to  the  land- 
scape, and  make  places  of  recreation  for  the 
people." 

Let  the  world  rise  to  the  occasion,  and  the 
288 


THE  PREVENTION  OF  FLOODS 

floods  will  be  at  an  end.  With  the  ending  of 
the  floods  will  come  in  the  age  of  water-power 
or  white  coal.  The  waters,  as  they  flow  down 
from  the  mountains,  are  more  valuable  than 
the  lands  they  devastate — if  their  devastation 
were  necessary.  But  they  need  bring  no  such 
devastation — and  they  canjbe  made  to  do  more 
work  than  our  coal  can  do,  and  instead  of  de- 
stroying the  lands  below,  they  may  be  made  to 
enrich  them  beyond  measure.  This  is  work 
for  each  nation  on  the  good  ship  Earth— and 
if  the  nations  fail,  it  is  work  for  the  federation 
of  the  world. 


CHAPTER  XXVI 

THE  SOIL  IN  JEOPARDY 

F  I  ^HE  decks  of  ships  are  scrubbed  by  a 
A  process  called  holystoning.  The  holy- 
stone— called  so,  perhaps,  because  the  use  of 
it  was  once  a  regular  Sunday  function  on  sail- 
ing ships — is  a  block  of  soft  sandstone,  with 
ropes  attached,  which  is  pulled  and  hauled 
back  and  forth  by  the  sailors,  over  the  wet 
deck. 

The  decks  of  the  good  ship  Earth  are  holy- 
stoned all  the  time — Sundays  and  week-days. 
The  Alps  and  the  Rocky  Mountains  are  rough 
spots  which  have  not  been  scrubbed  very  long, 
as  time  is  measured  by  earth  conditions.  They 
are  rough  and  rugged — but  the  holystoning  is 
going  on  all  the  time,  and  one  day  they  will 
be  low  and  some  day  they  will  be  level  with 
the  plain.  The  Appalachian  Mountains  are 
rounded  and  lower  and  covered  with  trees— 

290 


THE  SOIL  IN  JEOPARDY 

they  are  old,  old  mountains,  and  have  been 
holystoned  by  nature  for  many  more  cen- 
turies. The  plains  are  pretty  well  smoothed 
down  by  the  sailors — wind  and  sun  and  frost 
and  water. 

This  process  of  wearing  down  is  a  thing 
which  we  passengers  on  the  good  ship  Earth 
may  do  much  to  accelerate  or  to  retard.  That 
is  we  may  make  the  process  of  erosion  either 
more  or  less  rapid. 

Let  us  imagine  a  court  room  in  America  in 
the  year  2000.  A  farmer  is  brought  into  court 
by  an  officer. 

"What  is  the  charge  against  this  man,  Mr. 
Officer?"  asks  the  court. 

"He  is  charged  with  a  violation  of  the  ero- 
sion laws,  your  Honor,"  replies  the  officer. 

"What  is  the  evidence  against  him?" 

"There  was  rain  yesterday,  your  Honor," 
testifies  the  officer,  "and  on  inspecting  the 
fields  below  his  farm,  I  found  muddy  water 
flowing.  I  traced  it  to  its  source,  and  I  find 
that  he  is  so  cultivating  his  farm  that  the  soil 
is  actually  flowing  down  into  the  brook  in 

2911 


ON,  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 
turbid  streams.    It  is  clearly  a  violation  of  the 


statutes." 


The  farmer  protests  that  the  rain  was  tor- 
rential, or  the  cover  crop  failed,  or  he  urges 
some  other  excuse  for  letting  muddy  water 
run  from  his  fields;  but  never  for  a  moment 
does  he  suggest  to  the  court  that  the  muddy 
water  is  his  affair,  not  the  state's,  that  it  is  his 
soil,  not  the  state's,  or  that  he  has  a  right  to 
farm  his  own  land  as  he  will.  For  remember, 
this  is  the  year  2000,  and  it  has  become  a  tru- 
ism on  the  good  ship  Earth  that  the  old  ship 
herself  belongs  to  the  passengers  in  common, 
and  that  the  soil  is  the  people's.  The  farmer, 
like  the  town  dweller,  simply  has  the  right  to 
the  home  he  has  built  upon  it — the  right  to  a 
home  forever;  but  he  must  treat  the  soil  which 
belongs  to  all  in  such  a  way  as  to  keep  intact 
the  most  precious  heritage  of  the  race — that 
black  crust  of  dark  earth,  only  a  few  inches 
thick,  which  it  has  taken  so  many  years  to  ac- 
cumulate, and  which  once  destroyed  can 
scarcely  be  replaced. 

Does  this  sound  like  a  dream — a  Utopian 
292 


THE  SOIL  IN  JEOPARDY 

'dream?  Not  so  fast!  I  read  only  a  few  weeks 
ago  in  a  report  of  a  Japanese  experiment  sta- 
tion that  the  Japanese  government  had  forbid- 
den the  use  of  lime  in  a  certain  way  on  certain 
lands.  "This  soil  belongs  to  the  people  of 
Japan,"  says  the  law,  in  effect.  "We  have 
tried  experiments  and  found  that  the  use  of 
lime  on  that  soil  is  bad  for  it.  You  must 
stop  it!"  You  see,  the  Japanese  are  doing 
it  now! 

In  Japan  a  man  who  owns  a  tree  may  not 
cut  it  down  at  will.  He  must  get  permission 
of  the  public  officials,  and  when  he  cuts  the 
tree  after  receiving  permission,  he  must  plant 
young  trees  to  the  number  called  for  by  the 
rules.  A  similar  policy  prevails  in  Germany. 

What  has  this  to  do  with  erosion?  It  has 
this  to  do.  Erosion  is  merely  muddy  water 
flowing  from  lands.  No  muddy  water  flows 
from  a  prairie  in  a  state  of  nature,  or  from 
a  forest.  The  process  is  going  on  all  the  time, 
but  it  is  by  the  slipping  of  a  few  grains  per 
year  per  square  foot  to  a  point  an  inch  or  so 
lower — it  is  so  slow  that  the  soil  is  not  carried 

293 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

away  any  faster  than  the  subsoil  is  turned  to 
soil.  Erosion  of  this  sort  does  no  harm — it 
does  great  good.  It  has  made  the  Earth  hab- 
itable. The  richest  lands  have  been  made  by 
it.  But  when  man  plows  the  prairie  or  clears 
the  forest,  erosion  starts  up  fiercely  and  de- 
structively. Thousands  of  square  miles  of  the 
Appalachian  Mountains  and  of  those  of  Cali- 
fornia have  been  destroyed  for  human  use  by 
it.  We  dare  not  build  the  reservoirs  for  flood 
prevention  and  water-power  now  if  we  would 
or  they  will  silt  up  with  mud.  We  may  not 
make  our  rivers  the  great  waterways  they 
should  be  until  erosion  is  stopped,  because 
they  are  filling  up  with  the  mud  from  the 
hills,  the  valleys  are  being  ruined  by  gravel 
and  sterile  detritus  spread  over  the  once  fer- 
tile bottoms.  We  are  criminally  ruining  the 
decks  of  the  good  ship  Earth  for  the  use  of  our 
own  descendants. 

Destructive  erosion  of  mountains  an'd  hills 
can  be  stopped  by  national  systems  of  forests. 
Destructive  erosion  of  farms  can  be  stopped 
by  various  well-understood  methods.  Hills 

294 


THE  SOIL  IN  JEOPARDY 

too  steep  for  farming  should  not  be  plowed; 
but  they  often  make  good  pastures — and  they 
will  not  wash  away  when  in  sod.  Good  hilly 
land  may  be  farmed  in  such  a  way  as  to  pre- 
vent washing.  The  southern  plantations  be- 
fore the  war  were  laid  out  in  terraced  fields 
to  be  plowed  and  planted  according  to  the  con- 
tour of  the  hills — no  matter  how  steep  the  hill, 
the  furrows  and  rows  ran  level.  This  hinders 
erosion  when  properly  done.  Every  farmer 
in  a  hilly  region  should  be  shown  how  and 
obliged  by  law  to  adopt  the  plan.  Hillsides 
may  be  terraced,  so  that  they  become  a  suc- 
cession of  levels  which  will  not  wash — for  the 
steep  slopes  will  be  grassed  over.  Hillsides 
should  never  be  cultivated  with  long  exposed 
slopes  of  plowed  earth — the  slopes  should  be 
broken  by  strips  or  balks  of  grass  which  will 
catch  the  wash  and  hold  the  melted  soil  in 
place. 

But,  after  all,  these  plans  are  not  equal  to 
the  occasion.  The  real  need  is  that  the  silt 
of  our  rivers  be  saved,  and  the  mineral  plant 
food  carried  out  upon  the  lands  and  caught 

295 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

in  the  soil  by  percolation.  The  Chinese  and 
Japanese  show  us  how  this  is  done.  Their  rice 
paddies,  even  on  hillsides,  are  graded  to  a 
water  level,  and  furnished  with  a  rim  of  earth 
all  around  to  keep  the  water  from  running  off. 
It  is  caught  thus,  so  that  each  field  is  a  lake, 
the  water  of  which  soaks  down  through  the 
earth,  and  leaves  its  mineral  plant  food  in  the 
soil.  Sometime  we  must  come  to  this.  When 
that  time  comes,  the  Mississippi  floods  will 
be  controlled  not  only  by  reservoirs  in  the 
hills,  but  by  canals  spread  all  over  the  At- 
lantic-Gulf coastal  plain.  Doctor  King  points 
out  a  plan  which  must  be  followed  if  North 
America  ever  supports  the  population  of 
China.  A  canal  like  the  Grand  Canal  of 
China  will  run  from  the  mouth  of  the  Ohio 
to  the  mouth  of  the  Rio  Grande,  skirting  the 
hills  all  along,  and  catching  the  waters  from 
every  stream  from  the  northwest.  Another 
will  run  from  the  spot  on  the  left  bank  of  the 
Mississippi  where  the  bluffs  end — near  the 
mouth  of  the  St.  Francis — and  will  follow  the 
base  of  the  hills  across  the  states  of  Mississippi, 

296 


THE  SOIL  IN  JEOPARDY 

Alabama,  Georgia,  the  Carolinas  and  Vir- 
ginia, to  the  Chesapeake  Bay  in  Maryland. 
This  canal  will  catch  the  waters  of  all  the 
streams  coming  down  from  the  mountains 
east  of  the  Mississippi  and  south  of  Pennsyl- 
vania. It  will  be  a  great  waterway;  but  its 
main  use  will  be  to  distribute  the  waters  over 
the  lowland  plains,  now  so  inferior  in  farm- 
ing value  in  the  main,  and  make  of  them  an- 
other China  in  fertility.  A  thousand  sub- 
sidiary canals  will  bring  all  this  land  under 
irrigation — which  it  needs  as  much  as  do  the 
lands  of  China— indeed,  the  laboriously  irri- 
gated lands  of  the  Hwang-Ho  Valley  have 
more  rainfall  than  any  of  these  in  the  south  of 
our  own  country.  The  real  limit  of  popula- 
tion, as  has  been  pointed  out  by  McGee,  is  the 
water  limit — and  that  limit  can  be  raised  in 
only  one  way — the  conservation  of  water. 

The  final  center  of  population  of  the  United 
States  will  be  in  Dixie.  When  the  prairies  of 
Iowa  and  Illinois  shall  have  been  exhausted, 
the  balmy  southern  lowlands,  irrigated  by  a 
great  system  of  canals,  drained  by  tiles,  graded 

297 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

to  level  fields,  its  swamps  filled  by  making 
them  settling  beds  for  river  silt  and  drained 
by  pumping,  will  be  the  region  where  our 
most  teeming  population  will  live  in  plenty. 
And  this  without  much  reference  to  the  sort 
of  land  it  now  is.  In  a  hundred  years  the 
farmers  of  Denmark  have  made  themselves 
the  richest  people  in  average  wealth  in  Eu- 
rope— by  farming  a  waste  of  sand-dunes  like 
those  of  the  North  Carolina  littoral. 

Freedom,  justice  and  the  exercise  of  public 
dominion  over  the  use  of  the  land — these  are 
the  essentials  to  progress,  and  almost  the  only 
ones. 

"Boil  the  water!" 

This  is  the  cry  all  over  the  land,  save  in 
favored  localities.  Our  streams  and  lakes  are 
polluted.  All  up  and  down  the  Ohio  and  its 
branches  typhoid  rages  in  recurring  epi- 
demics. Chicago  used  to  regard  her  water 
supply,  coming  as  it  does  from  a  great,  cold, 
clear  inland  sea,  as  unimpeachable.  It  became 
polluted,  and  Chicago  dug  through  to  the  Il- 
linois River  and  sent  her  pollution  down  to 

208 


THE  SOIL  IN  JEOPARDY 


the  Gulf  past  St.  Louis  and  a  dozen  other 
cities.  She  then  thought  herself  amply  pro- 
tected. 

But  she  is  mistaken.  The  bodies  of  the 
Great  Lakes  themselves  are  becoming  con- 
taminated. Careful  studies  show  that  typhoid 
is  unduly  prevalent  in  almost  all  the  cities  and 
towns  of  the  Great  Lakes.  Those  who  know 
say  that  their  waters  are  "dangerously  con- 
taminated." 

On  the  soil  of  China,  where  from  two  to 
three  thousand  people  live  on  each  square 
mile,  and  have  done  so  for  thousands  of  years, 
one  does  not  expect  to  find  the  water  of  the 
soil  fit  for  drinking — and  does  not  find  it  so. 
But  why  is  it  that  our  lakes  and  streams  are 
growing  so  vile  at  such  a  rate  of  speed? 

It  is  owing  to  a  modern  invention — the 
sewer.  The  excreta  of  any  animal  are  poison- 
ous to  it — and  human  excreta  are  poisonous  to 
man.  We  are  pouring  this  poison  into  the 
lakes  and  streams  at  a  fearful  rate. 

The  pollution  of  the  waters  is  a  serious 
thing — but  it  is  not  the  most  serious  phase  of 

299 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

the  matter  of  sewage.  Sewage  is  fertility  of 
the  soil  temporarily  rendered  unfit  for  animal 
sustenance.  Let  the  plants  take  it  up,  and 
they  will  make  it  over  into  fruits,  flowers, 
grains,  woods — into  every  shape  of  beauty  and 
charm  the  landscape  displays  or  hides. 

The  sewers,  therefore,  are  open  veins  from 
which  is  flowing  the  life-blood  of  the  race. 
Never  until  this  age  of  sewerage  did  such  a 
danger  confront  the  passengers  on  the  good 
ship  Earth.  It  is  a  new  thing — and  a  new 
danger.  Sewage  contains  potash,  nitrogen 
and  phosphorus — the  precious  mineral  ele- 
ments which  the  plants  must  have  or  starve, 
and  in  the  absence  of  which  no  soil  can  pro- 
duce crops.  These  elements  come  from  the 
fields  in  the  meats,  the  bread,  the  vegetables 
and  the  fruits  which  are  consumed  by  the  peo- 
ple of  our  cities.  The  soil  from  which  they 
come  is  poorer  for  their  removal;  and  when 
they  are  flushed  into  the  streams,  the  waters 
are  poorer  in  all  that  goes  to  make  up  the 
riches  of  the  waters,  and  the  fertility  is  lost — 
forever. 

300 


THE  SOIL  IN  JEOPARDY 

This  loss  amounts  in  that  most  precious 
element  of  fertility,  phosphorus,  to  not  less 
than  two  pounds  per  acre  of  all  the  cropped 
soils  of  the  United  States  per  year.  It  would 
take  1,200,000  tons  of  phosphate  rock  per  year 
to  replace  this  fertility  in  the  soil.  Ground 
phosphate  rock,  not  so  good  for  crops  as  this 
sewage  would  be,  is  worth  on  the  average  over 
the  United  States  not  less  than  seven  dollars 
a  ton.  So  in  phosphorus  alone,  it  costs  us 
$8,400,000  a  year  to  pollute  the  streams  and 
lakes.  It  costs  us  the  typhoid,  too,  and  the 
loss  of  life,  and  the  expense  of  sewage  dis- 
posal. This  estimate  does  not  include  anything 
for  the  nitrogen  or  the  potash.  It  does  not  in- 
clude many  things  in  the  destruction  of  the 
cleanness  and  purity  of  our  forests  and  streams, 
which  are  beyond  all  price.  And  it  includes 
nothing  for  the  cost  of  boiling  the  water  so  as 
to  make  the  intestinal  bacteria  harmless  for 
drinking. 

The  city  of  Berlin  has  sewage  farms  upon 
which  the  outflow  of  the  city  sewers  is  al- 
lowed to  spread.  The  area  of  these  farms  is 

301' 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

43,009  acres!  In  1910,  in  addition  to  disposing 
of  the  sewage — which  is  a  costly  thing  for 
most  American  cities — this  sewage  paid  the 
city  of  Berlin  a  profit  of  $2.66  for  every  mil- 
lion gallons  handled.  And  the  produce  of 
these  acres  must  have  decreased  the  cost  of 
living  in  Berlin  and  vicinity.  At  any  rate,  the 
drain  of  fertility  and  the  pollution  of  the 
waters  were  stopped.  This  is  called  "broad 
irrigation,"  and  is  practised  extensively  both 
on  the  continent  and  in  Great  Britain.  It  is 
used  at  Pasadena,  California,  and  was  in  use 
at  Los  Angeles,  where  the  people  seem  to 
have  been  frightened  out  of  the  plan  by  find- 
ing that  the  Chinese  truck-gardeners  were 
using  the  sewage  in  growing  such  things  as 

radishes  and  lettuce,  for  which  it  is  unfit.  With 

i 

these  few  exceptions,  there  has  been  no  at- 
tempt in  this  country  to  return  sewage  to  the 
soil  from  which  it  is  drawn,  and  to  which  in 
economic  morals  it  belongs. 

But  there  are  ways  of  saving  the  fertilizer 
in  sewage  other  than  by  irrigation.  At  Mad- 
ison, Wisconsin,  it  has  been  found  that  the 

302 


THE  SOIL  IN  JEOPARDY 

sludge  of  the  sewage,  dried,  is  worth  about 
$8.00  a  ton  for  fertilizer.  At  Columbus  the 
sales  of  fertilizer  and  grease  from  the  sewage 
more  than  pay  for  the  operation.  At  Glas- 
gow, the  sludge  is  submitted  to  pressure,  and 
the  liquid,  carrying  much  fertility,  no  doubt, 
is  wasted  in  the  river;  but  the  dried  residue 
is  sold  to  farmers  for  $4.29  a  ton.  "Yorkshire 
grease"  is  extracted  from  the  sewage  at  Bed- 
ford, England,  and  sold  for  $40.00  a  ton.  The 
solid  residue  brings  $2.50  a  ton  for  fertilizer. 
Similar  methods  are  followed  in  other  British 
cities,  while  at  Chorley  the  sludge  is  used  in 
making  gas.  The  dried  sludge  at  Manchester 
is  readily  bought  for  their  land  by  farmers  at 
$5.00  a  ton.  At  Kingston-on-Thames  the  sludge 
is  mixed  with  other  fertilizers  by  concerns  en- 
gaged in  the  business  of  preparing  them,  and 
sent  back  to  the  soil.  At  Norwich  the  grease 
is  extracted  and  the  residue  made  into  fer- 
tilizer. In  Leeds  ammonia  is  made  from  it. 
In  some  of  these  forms  sewage  is  utilized  at 
Oldham,  Dublin  and  many  other  cities. 

The  drain  on  the  soil  of  the  United  States 

303 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

by  the  exportation  of  grains,  meats  and  other 
products  of  our  soil  is  enormous;  but  it  does 
not  necessarily  represent  an  actual  loss  to  the 
fertility  of  the  globe.  Shipped  away  from 
our  farms,  it  may  reappear  in  those  of  our 
brethren  on  the  other  side  of  the  water.  This 
is  not  a  world  question,  but  a  national  one.  The 
loss  through  the  sewers,  however,  is  a  world 
question.  It  represents  a  weakening  of  the 
vital  powers  of  Mother  Earth  through  her 
abuse  by  her  children. 

Van  Hise,  of  Wisconsin,  says:  "It  has  been 
held  that  in  this  country  it  is  impracticable  to 
use  sewage  for  fertilizer.  The  answer  is,  it  is 
being  done  in  other  countries.  The  phos- 
phorus of  sewage  can  be  saved  either  by  direct 
use  of  the  sewage,  or  the  separation  of  the 
phosphorus  by  some  method  to  be  developed. 
It  is  certain  that  one  of  these  must  be  done,  if 
in  the  future  we  are  to  conserve  the  fertility 
of  the  soil." 

When  the  good  ship  Earth  shall  pass  un- 
'der  the  control  of  the  captains  who  shall  wield 
the  power  of  her  peoples'  will  in  the  days  of 

304 


THE  SOIL  IN  JEOPARDY 

the  federation  of  the  world,  no  such  childish 
question  will  be  asked  as  to  whether  it  will 
pay  to  keep  our  streams  and  lakes  pure  from 
human  excrement,  or  to  keep  up  the  virtue  of 
our  soils. 

That  will  be  taken  for  granted.  The  re- 
wards will  go  to  those  sons  of  earth  who  will 
show  how  the  evil  can  be  cured. 

Perhaps  it  will  be  done  through  the  aboli- 
tion of  cities.  In  villages  the  task  would  be 
easy. 


CHAPTER  XXVII 

THE  HAULAGE  OF  FERTILITY 

THE  ability  to  destroy  the  earth  is  in  the 
hands  of  man.  It  is  a  new  power,  and 
comes  to  him  through  wonderful  increases  in 
his  might  through  knowledge.  Knowledge  is 
power — how  trite,  and  yet  how  true!  We 
are  destroying  the  earth  day  by  day,  as  far  as 
concerns  human  habitation.  We  are  so  using 
the  hills  and  fields  that  their  fertility  washes 
away,  never  to  return.  We  are  so  cultivating 
the  soil  that  its  virtue  departs  year  by  year  in 
the  phosphorus,  nitrogen,  potash,  sulphur  and 
lime  we  carry  from  it.  The  ability  to  destroy 
comes  along  with  the  pressure  of  need  and 
greed,  both  of  which  urge  us  to  take  away  and 
not  replace,  to  exhaust  and  not  replenish.  But 
we  are  coming  to  another  age. 

Already  the  phosphates  are  being  mined  and 
ground  and  used  on  our  farms.    The  potash  of 

306 


THE  HAULAGE  OF  FERTILITY 

Germany  comes  in  such  tonnage  that  the  con- 
trol of  its  shipment  by  the  German  govern- 
ment has  become  an  international  question. 
Nitrates  are  sold  as  freely  as  ever,  notwith- 
standing the  discovery  that  the  pod-bearing 
crops  will  take  nitrogen  from  the  air.  And 
the  demand  for  lime  for  the  soil  is  far  greater 
than  ever.  As  for  sulphur,  we  once  used  great 
amounts  of  it  as  ground  gypsum,  or  "land 
plaster",  a  use  which  has  been  abandoned  only 
to  be  revived,  if  the  students  of  the  subject 
are  to  be  believed. 

Except  in  the  case  of  some  few  alluvial  soils, 
which  are  naturally  supplied  with  new  plant 
food  by  means  of  the  minerals  dissolved  in  the 
waters  which  overflow  them,  all  soils  which 
are  cultivated  will  sooner  or  later  need  phos- 
phorus in  the  form  of  phosphate  rock.  This 
will  become  one  of  the  great  questions  in  the 
future — and  in  the  not  distant  future;  for  the 
original  supply  of  phosphorus  on  good  soils 
like  those  of  Ohio,  Indiana,  Illinois  and  Wis- 
consin is  a  third  gone  after  fifty  years  of  cul- 
tivation. The  phosphate  rocks  are  mostly  in 

307 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

Florida,  the  Carolinas,  Arkansas,  and  the 
Rocky  Mountain  states  of  Oregon,  Idaho  and 
Montana. 

Imagine  the  situation  when  all  the  depleted 
acres  of  the  east,  the  south  and  the  Mississippi 
Valley,  not  to  mention  the  rest  of  the  world, 
begin  to  call  for  phosphates.  The  carrying  of 
this  immense  tonnage  of  rock  from  the  de- 
posits to  the  farms  will  be  one  of  the  hugest 
transportation  problems  which  ever  con- 
fronted a  people.  While  the  supply  in  Flor- 
ida, South  Carolina  and  Arkansas  lasts  this 
carrying  problem  will  be  hard  enough;  but 
when  the  phosphates  must  be  brought  from  the 
northwest  to  the  east,  south  and  middle  states 
and  for  shipment  abroad,  if  such  shipment  be 
allowed  as  a  permanent  policy,  it  will  be  stu- 
pendous. The  present  railway  lines  to  those 
regions  could  not  carry  from  the  mountains  to 
the  farms  half  the  supply  of  phosphate  which 
it  would  be  desirable  to  use  now,  even  if  they 
abandoned  all  other  tonnage.  But,  of  course, 
new  railways  will  be  built — many  of  them. 
Whether  or  not  it  will  ever  be  possible  for 

308 


THE  HAULAGE  OF  FERTILITY 

phosphate  rock  to  be  hauled  by  rail  from 
those  regions  on  such  terms  as  will  enable  us 
to  keep  up  the  fertility  of  our  lands,  is  really 
the  thing  which  is  doubtful. 

What  is  true  of  phosphorus  is  equally  cer- 
tain with  reference  to  potash.  The  present 
supply  comes  from  the  potash  beds — and  is 
shipped  a  long,  long  way.  We  shall  need  a 
hundred  tons  of  potash  to  one  used  now,  when 
we  begin  to  go  seriously  about  the  drainage 
and  reclamation  of  our  70,000,000  acres  of 
swamps — for  swamps  are  usually  so  poor  in 
potash  that  they  need  it  from  the  very  day  of 
reclamation.  Our  own  supplies  of  potash  are 
found  in  the  kelp  growing  in  the  Pacific  Ocean 
off  the  Californian  coast,  and  some  small  beds 
of  potash  salts  in  the  Great  Basin.  The  carry- 
ing of  this  supply  from  any  of  these  sources  is 
sure  to  become  before  very  long  a  huge  prob- 
lem for  the  nation — and  as  other  nations  arc 
no  more  favorably  situated,  on  the  whole,  these 
will  be  enormous  world  problems  for  all  us 
mariners  on  the  good  ship  Earth. 

Nitrogen  can  be  bought  in  the  market,  as 

3°9 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

yet,  though  this  supply  is  limited;  it  may  be 
saved  in  immense  quantities  from  burning 
coal  and  in  other  commercial  ways ;  but  in  the 
main  we  must  get  our  nitrogen  from  the  air, 
in  which  it  is  found  in  unlimited  quantities. 
There  are  many  plants  which  take  nitrogen 
from  the  air,  and  use  it  in  their  own  growth. 
When  they  die,  they  leave  some  of  it  in  the 
soil.  But  the  plants  on  which  we  must  mainly 
rely  are  the  pod-bearing  plants  or  legumes, 
such  as  beans,  peas,  alfalfa,  clover  and  the 
like.  They  house  in  their  roots  the  bacteria 
which  are  able  to  fix  the  free  nitrogen  of  the 
air  in  such  quantities  that  the  farmer  who 
plows  these  plants  down  has  more  of  this  most 
precious  of  plant  foods  than  he  had  before. 
No  such  operation  is  possible  with  any  of  the 
other  elements  of  plant  food. 

Air  transports  itself.  The  haulage  of  nitro- 
gen is  not,  therefore,  a  problem,  as  in  the  case 
of  the  phosphorus  in  the  phosphate  rocks,  or 
the  potash  in  the  sea  and  its  kelp,  or  the  pot- 
ash beds  of  Germany.  But  it  presents  a  prob- 
lem in  transportation  for  all  that.  There  is 

310 


THE  HAULAGE  OF  FERTILITY 

lime  enough  for  the  crops  in  almost  any  soil 
but  the  root-bacteria  of  the  legumes  will  not 
live  in  an  acid  soil.  When  a  soil  is  "sour"  it 
must  be  sweetened  with  lime  before  the  bac- 
teria will  live  in  it,  and  until  they  do  so  live, 
the  crops  that  enrich  the  soil  with  nitrogen 
can  not  be  grown.  Millions  of  acres  of  our  so- 
called  "poor"  soils  need  lime  for  the  bacteria 
rather  than  fertility  for  the  crops.  Limestone 
is  found  in  unlimited  quantities  in  almost 
every  country,  but  the  transportation  of  the 
ground  limestone  or  the  burned  lime  to  the 
lands  is  a  great  task  for  the  nations,  and  a  press- 
ing duty  resting  upon  the  transportation  facili- 
ties of  the  world,  perhaps  as  great  as  the  haul- 
age of  potash  and  phosphorus. 

Sulphur  has  long  been  supposed  to  be  plen- 
tiful enough  in  all  soils  so  that,  with  the  fifteen 
to  twenty  pounds  per  acre  which  fall  in  the 
rains  and  snows  each  year,  it  would  never  be- 
come so  scarce  as  to  limit  the  growth  of  crops. 
But  investigators  have  recently  found  that  this 
is  not  true.  Plants  use  much  more  sulphur 
than  was  supposed.  Many  soils  now  need  sul- 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

phur.  The  supply  is  unlimited,  and  is  found 
in  the  gypsum  beds.  The  grinding  and  hauling 
of  gypsum  to  the  lands  is  sure  to  become  a 
greater  and  greater  task  as  the  years  go  by. 

In  addition  to  these  problems  in  the  haulage 
of  fertility,  there  is  that  of  returning  the  ma- 
nure to  the  land.  All  the  hay  and  grain  used 
in  cities  reaches  the  final  condition  of  manure. 
So  with  all  these  things  fed  to  animals  on 
farms.  This  manure  is  the  best  fertilizer  in  the 
world,  containing  as  it  does,  phosphorus,  pot- 
ash, nitrogen  and  sulphur,  together  with  the 
plant  fiber  which  makes  humus  in  the  land. 
The  waste  of  manure  in  this  country  is  a  great 
national  crime — nay,  it  is  a  world  crime,  since 
it  decreases  permanently  the  capacity  of  the 
world  as  a  whole  to  maintain  population.  The 
burning  of  manure  piles  is  a  crime.  The  prac- 
tise of  allowing  them  to  rot  away  unused  is  a 
crime.  The  wasting  of  these  immense  stores 
of  fertility  in  cities,  by  burning,  dumping  into 
the  sea  and  otherwise,  should  no  longer  be 
permitted.  What  is  true  with  regard  to  ma- 
nure off  the  farm  is  true  of  it  on  the  farm.  No 

312 


THE  HAULAGE  OF  FERTILITY 

landowner  should  be  allowed  to  waste  the  fer- 
tility of  the  land  through  waste  of  manure  be- 
cause the  land  happens  to  be  "his  own  farm." 
The  world  has  an  interest  in  the  maintenance 
of  the  land's  virtue — for  "the  earth  He  hath 
given  to  the  children  of  men" — not  to  some 
of  the  children  of  men. 

Do  you  see  the  problem!  It  is  very  simple. 
We  are  all  the  time  hauling  fertility  away 
from  the  fields  in  things  to  eat,  drink  and  wear. 
The  ships  and  cars  and  wagons  of  the  world 
are  loaded  with  this  away-going  fertility.  And 
the  ships,  cars  and  wagons  must  be  loaded  with 
all  that  is  necessary  to  return  it — if  the  world 
is  to  last 


CHAPTER  XXVIII 

THE  RAILWAYS  ACROSS  THE  DECKS 

THE  measure  of  a  civilization  is  in  its 
highways.  A  people  like  the  ancient 
Greeks,  whose  lands  were  all  islands  and 
peninsulas,  or  the  Phenicians  and  Cartha- 
ginians, who  dwelt  on  coasts,  to  whom  the 
ocean  was  a  universal  highway,  might  climb 
to  great  heights  of  civilization  in  certain  spe- 
cialties; but  when  a  people  is  spread  over 
great  expanses  of  land,  it  must  build  high- 
ways, like  the  canals  of  China,  or  roads  like 
jthose  of  the  Romans  or  like  ours  or  it  must 
remain  semi-civilized  and  nomadic  like  the 
hordes  of  Genghis  Khan  and  Tamerlane,  or 
the  tribes  of  Arabia. 

Lord  Bacon  says:  "There  be  three  things 
which  make  a  nation  great  and  prosperous:  a 
fertile  soil,  busy  workshops,  and  easy  convey- 
ance for  men  and  commodities  from  one  place 


THE  RAILWAYS 

to  another."  This  is  the  dictum  of  the  great- 
est mind,  perhaps,  which  the  world  has  ever 
produced,  in  favor  of  what  the  Socialists  call 
"economic  determinism". 

We  have  considered  in  these  letters  the  mat- 
ter of  soil  fertility.  Let  us  now  look  at  the 
question  of  ueasy  conveyance  of  men  and  com- 
modities from  one  place  to  another."  We  speak 
glibly  of  the  "annihilation  of  distance",  and 
"the  triumph  of  mind  over  matter" ;  but  it  is 
perfectly  clear  that  we  passengers  and  crew  of 
the  good  ship  Earth  are  dreadfully  cramped 
in  our  activities  by  the  limitations  which  mat- 
ter imposes  on  mind  in  the  matter  of  easy  con- 
veyance of  men  and  commodities  from  one 
place  to  another.  If  by  taking  thought  the 
goods  of  Europe  and  North  America  could  be 
magically  moved  to  the  places  where  they  are 
needed  to  feed,  shelter  and  clothe  the  poor  of 
the  world ;  if  by  a  magic  carpet  the  products  of 
farms,  forests,  stock  ranges  and  mines  could  be 
transferred  to  the  cities  and  mills;  if  by  seven- 
league  boots  the  rotting  fruits  and  woods  and 
precious  growths  of  the  tropics  could  be  re- 

315 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

moved  to  the  marts  of  trade;  if  by  mind  force 
people  could  really  annihilate  distance  and 
appear  where  their  needs  and  desires  might 
dictate;  if  by  occult  power  the  mineral  fer- 
tility of  the  earth  could  be  redeposited  in  our 
depleted  soils — then  there  would  be  no  need  in 
the  world,  in  the  absence  of  robbery  or  theft. 

The  spread  of  the  people  on  this  huge  plan- 
etary Zeppelin  over  those  portions  of  her  sur- 
face which  are  far  from  seas  and  navigable 
rivers,  under  conditions  of  progress  and  civ- 
ilization, is  a  new  thing.  It  has  been  made 
possible  by  the  invention  of  the  steam-en- 
gine and  the  railway  of  iron  and  steel.  The 
camel,  the  bullock  cart,  and  the  horse-drawn 
vehicle  could  serve  a  sparse  population  and 
a  barbaric  development,  and  when  supple- 
mented by  slavery  could  produce  a  state  of  af- 
fairs which  presented  many  of  the  outward 
aspects  of  civilization — but  it  was  civiliza- 
tion which  was  monopolized  by  the  few  and 
for  which  the  masses  slaved  and  died  in  dark- 
ened agonies. 

The  railway  changed  all  that.  It  carried 
316 


THE  RAILWAYS 

commerce  across  continents,  and  democratized 
the  civilization  of  the  nineteenth  century.  For 
it  harnessed  to  huge  cars  bigger  than  the  ships 
of  the  Greeks  and  rolling  on  wheels  set  on 
smooth  metal  tracks,  enormous  artificial 
draft-animals  swifter  than  the  horse  of 
Phoebus,  and  more  powerful  than  the  Min- 
otaur. The  railway  has  done  more  for  democ- 
racy than  has  any  other  one  material  agency. 

It  has  done  enormous  labors — and  it  must 
do  more.  Most  of  the  civilized  nations  have 
seen  the  error  of  allowing  these  highways  to 
be  owned  by  some  men,  rather  than  by  all  men 
through  governments;  and  nearly  all  of  them 
have  now  reduced  these  roads  to  public  own- 
ership. Great  Britain,  Turkey  and  the  United 
States  are  the  only  ones  that  still  adhere  to 
the  outworn  notion  that  the  ownership  of  the 
highways  should  be  left  in  private  hands. 

The  needs  of  the  people  in  the  future  can 
not  be  met  by  privately  owned  railways.  This 
must  be  apparent  from  almost  any  view-point; 
but  if  for  no  other  reason,  the  railways  must 
be  publicly  owned  because  they  must  be  called 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

upon  for  public  service  to  be  rendered  regard- 
less of  profit.  Transportation  is  a  huge  col- 
lective job  which  must  be  performed  with 
reference  to  the  development  of  the  nation, 
rather  than  any  sort  of  profit.  Germany, 
through  her  government  railways,  is  able  to 
develop  any  part  of  the  empire  at  will,  through 
railway  service.  We  have  tried  to  develop  our 
industries  by  means  of  protective  tariffs — and 
no  man  knows  with  reference  to  these  indus- 
tries how  much  of  their  prosperity  is  due  to 
the  tariff,  and  how  much  to  advantages 
of  soil,  people  and  situation.  But  a  gov- 
ernment railway  can  equalize  conditions  all 
over  a  continent,  so  far  as  the  limitations 
of  a  railway  transport  will  admit.  Govern- 
ment railways  could  carry  to  a  region  devoid 
of  stone  and  timber,  for  instance,  whatever 
might  be  needed,  and  thereby  create  prosper- 
ity where  poverty  might  otherwise  reign.  It 
could  carry  these  things  regardless  of  profit. 
All  it  need  determine  would  be  the  question, 
"Is  there  here  a  region  on  which  population 

318 


THE  RAILWAYS 

can  be  supported,  if  its  natural  disadvantages 
are  compensated  for  by  transportation!" 

A  government  system  of  railways  must  be 
called  into  service  to  carry  back  to  the  depleted 
lands  of  the  United  States  their  lost  fertility. 
The  privately  owned  railways  can  not  be  just- 
ly asked  to  do  this  except  at  a  profit;  but  the 
publicly  owned  system  would  assume  the  work 
as  a  clear  duty.  Highways  are  necessary  to 
the  development  of  the  hinterlands  of  the 
world.  They  are  as  indispensable  as  are  ele- 
vators for  the  utilization  of  the  top  stories 
of  high  buildings.  Symmetrical  and  uniform 
development  of  the  good  lands  of  the  world 
is  not  a  private  question,  but  a  public  one — a 
question  of  world-wide  significance.  It  can 
not  be  left  to  a  solution  along  lines  of  profit 
to  the  owners  of  railways.  Railways  in  pri- 
vate hands  fall  short  of  the  needs  of  the  occa- 
sion in  modern  civilization,  just  as  slavery  fell 
in  ancient  times.  No  lands  separated  from 
the  sea  by  continental  distances,  and  unpro- 
vided with  waterways,  can  ever  be  completely 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

developed  by  privately  owned  railways — they 
must  always  remain  in  that  stage  of  arrested 
development  in  which  such  states  as  Iowa  and 
the  Dakotas  now  find  themselves,  and  in  which 
they  are  mere  feeding  territory  for  the  fully 
developed  communities  of  the  seaboard. 

After  all,  why  should  profit  be  considered 
in  the  matter  of  transportation?  Absolutely 
free  use  of  railways  for  both  freight  and  pas- 
sengers would  create  such  property  values 
in  the  districts  reached  that  they  could  easily 
carry  the  burden  in  taxation.  To  the  average 
mind  the  suggestion  of  free  highways  at  once 
calls  up  the  vision  of  traffic  blocked  by  both 
freight  and  passengers;  but  no  freight  would 
be  sent  for  amusement,  or  for  any  other  reason 
than  to  satisfy  human  wants,  and  no  one  would 
travel  save  for  some  object.  So  we  are  brought 
to  the  conclusion  that  humanity  will  never  be 
free  to  satisfy  its  wants  until  the  railways  are 
free,  as  the  elevators  are  free  in  great  build- 
ings. Free  highways  would  bring  to  perfec- 
tion Bacon's  ideal  of  a  nation  with  "easy  con- 

320 


THE  RAILWAYS 

veyance  of  men  and  commodities  from  one 
place  to  another." 

Does  the  thing  look  visionary?  Well,  take 
the  state  of  Iowa.  Give  her  free  railway  trans- 
portation to  the  lakes  and  the  ocean.  Tax  the 
city  and  rural  land  values  of  Iowa  to  pay  the 
cost  of  the  building  and  operation  of  the  rail- 
ways. Can  it  be  doubted  that  the  values  cre- 
ated by  the  free  ways  would  pay  for  their  op- 
eration? Would  it  not  pay  a  corporation  own- 
ing Iowa  to  build  railways  for  its  free  accom- 
modation? Then  why  would  it  not  pay  the 
people  of  Iowa?  Free  transportation  may 
never  come,  but  that  it  is  an  economic  pos- 
sibility under  a  proper  system  of  taxation,  I 
have  no  doubt.  I  believe,  too,  that  the  most 
economical  way  to  pay  transportation  charges 
would  be  at  the  court-house  rather  than  the 
railway  office  wicket. 


CHAPTER  XXIX 

ROBINSON  CRUSOE'S  LESSON 

RDBINSON  CRUSOE,  every  one  will  re- 
member, found  a  good  log  and  made 
himself  a  fine  boat  in  which  he  deemed  escape 
from  the  island  perfectly  feasible.  It  was  a 
good  boat.  It  was  so  light  that  once  in  the 
water,  he  could  have  taken  it  anywhere  water 
ran  by  oar  or  sail. 

But  he  forgot  the  principle  which  must 
control  transportation  all  over  the  good  ship 
Earth  if  her  passengers  are  to  get  out  of  her 
management  the  products  called  for  by  the 
needs  of  multiplying  humanity.  He  forgot 
that  a  weight  is  a  thousand  times  more  easily 
moved  when  afloat,  than  when  ashore.  He 
could  not  put  his  boat  in  the  water.  And 
though  it  was  a  perfectly  good  boat,  he  was 
forced  to  see  it  rot  away  by  lapse  of  years,  be- 
cause he  could  neither  take  it  to  the  sea  nor 
bring  the  sea  to  it. 

322 


ROBINSON  CRUSOE'S  LESSON 

When  a  weight  is  floated  in  water  it  is  more 
easily  moved  than  under  any  other  circum- 
stances of  transportation.    By  this  simple  truth 
the  big  facts  of  history  are  explained.    It  ex- 
plains why  Greece  and  Rome  became  great, 
why  the   greatest  nations   of   antiquity  were 
grouped  about  the  shores  of  the  Mediterra- 
nean, why  Japan  is  so  wonderful,  why  the 
Northmen  overspread  the  western  world,  why 
the  "meteor  flag  of  England"  means  so  much, 
why  Russia  is  so  undeveloped  interiorly,  why 
Holland  and  Belgium  are  the  marvels  of  the 
world,  and  why  Denmark  has  been  able  to 
make  the  tillers  of  waste  sand-dunes  the  rich- 
est people  in  Europe  in  per  capita  wealth.   It 
accounts  for  the  desert  steppes  of  Siberia  and 
Canada  and  interior  Australia.    It  has  deter- 
mined   the    status    of    South    America    and 
Africa  as  the  Dark  Continents.    It  holds  Iowa 
back  in  development  as  compared  with  Illi- 
nois, and  tells  Iowa  to  step  before  South  Da- 
kota.   It  strings  great  cities  along  waterways 
like  pearls.    All  these  things  are  explained  by 
the  simple  physical  fact  that  if  a  thing  is  to 

323 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

be  moved  with  the  greatest  possible  ease  it 
must  be  floated  in  water.  The  hinterlands  of 
the  world  may  build  their  dugouts,  but  unless 
they  are  able  to  place  them  in  the  water,  their 
work  will  be  futile. 

The  railway  has  been  invented  for  the  pur- 
pose of  solving  Crusoe's  problem.  But  it  is 
still  an  open  question  whether  the  far  back- 
lands  can  ever  be  fully  developed  by  land  car- 
riage— even  the  railway  is  so  much  more  ex- 
pensive a  thing  for  moving  things  than  the 
waterway.  On  a  good  waterway  it  is  profit- 
able to  carry  a  ton  a  thousand  miles  for  a  dol- 
lar; but  the  railways  of  the  United  States  are 
obliged  to  collect  about  seven  dollars  and  fifty 
cents  on  the  average,  for  the  same  service. 
Coal  and  ore  are  carried  on  the  Great  Lakes 
more  than  two  thousand  miles  for  a  dollar  per 
ton.  Coal  is  shipped  by  water  from  Cleve- 
land to  Duluth  for  less  money  than  it  would 
cost  to  have  it  shoveled  down  cellar  if  it  lay 
in  the  alley  by  the  cellar  window. 

The  world  went  daft  over  the  railway  and 
has  allowed  that  greatest  of  all  inventions  in 

324 


ROBINSON  CRUSOE'S  LESSON 

land  carriage,  first,  to  fall  into  private  owner- 
ship, and  second,  to  destroy  the  commerce  of 
the  inland  waterways.  Both  were  vital  errors ; 
and  both  are  being  remedied  in  most  civilized 
countries.  Great  Britain  had  a  good  system 
of  canals  when  the  railway  was  perfected — 
and  allowed  them  to  lapse  into  slimy  disuse. 
In  the  United  States  the  Erie  Canal  had  saved 
the  west,  and  canals  were  paralleling  many 
of  the  streams  leading  over  and  beyond  the 
Appalachian  Mountain  system,  when  the  en- 
ergies and  the  capital  of  the  nation  were  di- 
verted to  the  new  Eldorado  of  railroading. 
To  a  greater  or  less  extent,  the  same  thing  took 
place  all  over  the  world  save  in  Holland  and 
China. 

How  could  the  railways  destroy  the  com- 
merce of  the  inland  waterways  if  the  carriage 
of  goods  by  rail  is  so  much  more  expensive? 
A  very  pertinent  question,  but  not  a  difficult 
one.  The  railway  runs  over  hills  and  moun- 
tains, while  the  waterway  can  be  constructed 
only  where  water  runs  or  can  be  made  to  run. 
The  railway  ran  to  the  heart  of  every  village, 

325 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

while  the  waterway  stopped  at  the  waterside. 
The  railway  had  freight  houses  and  passenger 
stations  with  agents  and  attendants,  while  the 
waterway  was  allowed  to  offer  nothing  but  a 
bare  wharf,  or  an  earth  landing.  In  spite  of 
the  superiority  of  the  waterways  when  their 
freight  was  once  afloat,  many  of  them  were 
so  badly  off  for  equipment  that  it  cost  more 
to  get  freight  up  and  down  the  banks  and  into 
the  towns  than  the  railway  freight  amounted 
to,  high  though  that  might  be.  Moreover, 
the  railways  had  organizations,  all  more  or 
less  predatory  and  unscrupulous,  and  made 
active  war  on  the  waterways.  The  waterways 
had  no  fighting  power.  The  railways  could 
carry  freight  at  a  loss  for  a  while  between 
points  affected  by  water  competition,  and 
make  it  up  on  traffic  which  was  at  the  rail- 
way's mercy  through  lack  of  all  competition. 
So  by  ways  various  and  devious  the  rail- 
ways put  most  of  the  canals  and  rivers  out  of 
business. 

The  world  is   coming  back  to  waterways, 
and  the  future  must  see  to  the  utilization  for 

326 


ROBINSON  CRUSOE'S  LESSON 

commerce  of  every  stream  which  can  be  made 
to  furnish  water  for  locks  and  dams.  When 
the  world  is  fully  developed,  the  stream  which 
is  not  also  a  waterway  will  be  the  exception, 
and  not  the  rule.  The  railways  will  be  op- 
erated for  the  main  purpose  of  getting  the 
heavy  freight  to  the  nearest  water,  and  there 
setting  it  afloat.  The  streams  will  be  devel- 
oped as  a  national  system,  with  standard 
depths,  and  capacity  of  locks,  to  accommo- 
date standardized  water  craft.  Every  ripar- 
ian town  and  village  will  have  its  harbor, 
equipped  with  freight-handling  machinery 
which  will  render  cheap  the  cost  of  taking  on 
and  discharging  freight.  Railway  cars  will 
be  made  with  detachable  bodies,  built  some- 
times as  a  whole,  and  sometimes  in  sections,  so 
that  either  in  car-loads  or  smaller  lots,  freight 
can  be  lifted  by  cranes  in  a  moment  from  rail 
to  boat  or  boat  to  rail.  The  whole  carrying 
trade  of  the  world  will  be  reorganized  on  the 
basis  of  making  the  railways  the  carriers  of 
passengers  and  of  packages  and  perishable 
freight,  and  the  connecting  links  between 

327 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

waterways.  The  heavy  slow  work  will  fall 
upon  the  waterways  as  a  matter  of  course. 

This  is  not  altogether  a  prophecy;  for  there 
is  scarcely  a  civilized  nation  on  earth  which 
is  not  planning  to  do  in  whole  or  in  part  ex- 
actly what  is  here  suggested.  Nearly  all  of 
them  are  far  in  advance  of  the  United  States 
in  this  field  of  progress.  Everywhere  it  is  rec- 
ognized that  the  principles  here  enunciated 
are  correct. 

The  ultimate  needs  of  the  earth's  children 
can  not  be  served  by  railways,  except  as  to  the 
light  traffic  and  the  short  distances.  In  the 
last  stages  of  development  the  great  nations  of 
the  present,  with  their  huge  cities,  must  either 
decay  from  having  been  exhausted  of  their 
natural  capacities  for  supporting  the  peoples 
constituting  them  or  their  people  must  mi- 
grate, or  they  must  carry  over  long  distances 
the  coal,  the  ores,  the  timber,  the  phosphates, 
the  nitrates  and  the  potash  which  are  the 
basis  of  life  in  civilization.  All  these  are 
heavy  cheap  things  which  must  be  moved 
cheaply,  even  though  slowly,  if  they  are  moved 

328 


ROBINSON  CRUSOE'S  LESSON 

at  all.  In  those  days  the  phosphates  of  the 
world  will  come  down  the  canalized  Missouri, 
and  down  the  locked  Columbia  and  his  head 
streams,  while  the  railways  will  be  used  only 
as  tramways  for  bringing  Crusoe's  dugout  to 
the  water.  Similar  developments  will  take 
place  all  over  the  world.  The  waters  will 
carry  the  great  bulk  of  the  freight 


CHAPTER  XXX 

THE  WATER  COURSES 

ONE  of  the  most  splendid  works  ever 
erected  by  men  for  making  efficient  use 
of  the  earth,  is  the  great  dam  at  Assouan, 
Egypt.  It  is  built  to  hold  back  the  flood 
waters  of  the  River  Nile  for  purposes  of  ir- 
rigation. Our  reclamation  service  has  cre- 
ated nothing  finer  than  this  great  engineering 
project,  which  spreads  over  whole  provinces 
the  waters  from  the  Abyssinian  Mountains, 
giving  the  crops  of  the  poor  Egyptian  fellahs 
or  peasants  both  food  and  drink. 

But  do  the  fellahs  get  the  benefit?  Let  us 
see.  The  water  from  the  dam  is  furnished 
principally  to  Middle  and  Lower  Egypt  and 
the  province  of  Fayum.  In  these  regions  since 
the  water  has  been  available  for  the  crops  the 
land  has  paid  an  increased  taxation  of  about 

330 


THE  WATER  COURSES 

$5,000,000  annually.  The  cost  of  the  works 
up  to  the  time  mentioned  was  about  $52,500,- 
ooo.  It  will  be  seen  that  the  taxation  collected 
because  of  the  values  created  by  the  dam 
amount  to  about  five  per  cent,  interest  on  the 
investment. 

And  most  people  will  say  that  the  govern- 
ment has  done  well  in  the  transaction — for  it 
is  collecting  enough  to  pay  the  interest,  and 
perhaps  a  sinking  fund  and  the  cost  of  opera- 
tion. But  let  us  look  deeper.  The  land  in 
the  provinces  affected  has  increased  in  value 
because  of  the  irrigation,  from  $977,500,000 
to  $2,438,750,000;  and  the  aggregate  rent  has 
grown  from  $81,250,000  annually  to  $188,- 
750,000.  All  these  figures  are  approxima- 
tions only,  but  they  are  correct  as  proportions, 
and  show  clearly  that  the  British  management 
of  Egypt  has  by  the  building  of  this  dam  lib- 
erated from  the  desert  latent  values  in  the  dry 
deck  room  of  the  good  ship  Earth  amount- 
ing to  over  a  hundred  millions  a  year,  for 
which  it  gets  back  in  taxation  only  five  mil- 
lions. As  for  the  fellahs,  they  are  no  better 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

off.  They  must  still  pay  for  the  use  of  the 
deck  room  on  their  own  old  air-ship.  They 
may  be  glad  of  the  increase  in  the  number  of 
jobs,  the  general  progress  of  the  nation  may 
bring  them  pleasures  unknown  before,  or 
moral  benefits — or  it  may  not;  but  this  is  the 
point  I  am  making:  The  only  people  who  re- 
ceive money  profit  from  the  Assouan  dam  are 
the  owners  of  the  lands — who  may  live  in  Lon- 
don or  New  York,  or  Constantinople  or 
Cairo;  may  use  these  huge  profits  to  add  new 
attractions  to  harems,  or  buy  titled  husbands 
for  eligible  daughters,  or  repair  ancestral  cas- 
tles, or  indulge  in  motor-cars  or  yachts.  The 
fellahs  are  no  better  off  while  working  on  the 
new  irrigation  blocks  than  they  were  when 
laboring  on  the  old  Nile  flood-plain.  All  the 
fellahs  get,  anyhow,  is  a  mere  living. 

The  water  of  the  Nile  was  drawn  up  from 
the  ocean  by  the  ownerless  sun,  blown  by  the 
free  winds  over  the  lands,  and  lowered  to  the 
valley  by  the  everlasting  hills.  The  water  did 
not  belong  to  the  landlords  of  Egypt.  The 
dam  was  built  by  the  government  (which  in 

332 


THE  WATER  COURSES 

morals  belongs  to  the  fellahs  as  much  as  to 
an  equal  number  of  pashas)  by  the  expend- 
iture of  money  raised  on  the  credit  of  the  la- 
bor-power of  the  fellahs.    The  dam,  then,  can 
not  belong  to  the  landlords  of  Egypt.    And 
when,  by  the  use  of  the  people's  money,  God's 
sun  and  wind  and  the  hills  whence  cometh 
the  help,  not  of  landlords,  but  of  men,  a  hun- 
dred millions  annually  are  created  by  a  gov- 
ernment is  it  not  theft  of  the  most  iniquitous 
sort  if  the  landlords  of  Egypt  are  allowed  to 
collect  and  keep  the  hundred  millions?  Think 
what  that  sum  would  do  for  the  fellaheen, 
if  it  were  turned  into  the  public  treasury,  as 
in  good  morals  it  should  be!     It  would  lift 
them   out  of  their   ignorance   by  means   of 
schools.    It  would  construct  public  baths  and 
theaters.     It   would   install   easy  and   cheap 
transportation    facilities.      It  would   finance 
their    agriculture    through    rural    peasants' 
banks.     It  would  hire  agricultural  instruct- 
ors, and  serve  cooperative  marketing  plans.  It 
would  send  colleges  to  the  Egyptians  and  the 
Egyptians  to  college. 

333 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

It  would  do  all  these  things,  not  by  taking 
aught  from  the  landlords  which  belongs  to 
them,  but  by  stopping  the  robbery  of  the  fel- 
laheen by  the  landlords — for  every  penny  of 
the  hundred  millions  belongs  in  the  high 
court  of  ethics  to  the  people,  and  not  one 
penny  of  it  to  the  landlords. 

Better  than  all  these  benefits  that  would 
come  to  the  people  by  forbidding  the  land- 
lords to  take  what  belongs  to  all,  the  policy  of 
justice  would  take  from  the  landlords  the 
profits  which  are  the  incentive  to  their  monop- 
oly of  lands.  The  profits  of  landlordism  being 
abolished,  that  ancient  institution  would  itself 
fall,  and  the  irrigated  lands  under  the  Assouan 
dam  would  be  free  to  the  fellahs — whose  pov- 
erty would,  on  the  day  they  became  free,  come 
to  an  end. 

The  Assouan  dam  is  the  type  of  every  great 
public  work  which  invites  the  collective  en- 
ergy of  the  people  on  the  good  ship  Earth. 
We  passengers  have  so  arranged  things  that 
the  better  we  manage,  the  more  it  costs  us  for 
room  on  the  decks  from  which  all  mankind 

334 


THE  WATER  COURSES 

were  evolved,  and  to  which  they  must  return. 
Our  own  reclamation  works  have  created  huge 
values  which  are  lapsing  into  private  hands  by 
payment  of  the  mere  cost  of  construction — 
though  that  cost  ordinarily — as  in  the  case  of 
Assouan — represents  but  a  fraction  of  the 
values  created.  Let  Washington  and  Oregon, 
for  instance,  clear  and  reclaim  their  stump 
lands  by  the  only  agencies  which  seem  ade- 
quate— the  power  of  the  government — and  the 
people's  money  becomes  at  once  the  creator  of 
values  which  oppress,  rather  than  liberate,  the 
workers. 

So  it  is  all  over  the  world.  We  may  bring 
the  sea  to  the  farms  by  canals,  and  make  of 
the  interior  city  a  port,  and  the  landowners 
reap  the  profits.  We  might  build  and  operate 
free  railways  for  the  development  of  the 
Earth  as  a  dwelling  for  her  passengers,  and 
those  passengers  who  own  the  soil,  under  the 
laws  in  force  over  most  of  the  world,  would 
be  able  to  capitalize  every  cent  of  the  benefits 
in  the  values  of  their  lands.  Tom  L.  Johnson, 
of  Cleveland,  paved  the  way  for  three-cent 

335 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

fares  on  the  Cleveland  street  railways  in  the 
place  of  five-cent  fares — but  the  people  who 
lease  houses  along  the  street  railway  lines  are 
not  a  cent  better  off  for  the  reduction — the 
landlords  have  taken  all  the  reduction  in  rents. 
Let  the  floods  be  prevented  by  headwaters' 
control  of  streams,  and  the  benefits  to  the 
swamp  and  overflow  lands  would  more  than 
equal  the  cost — but  under  our  governmental 
systems  in  vogue  all  over  the  world  they  would 
not  pay  it.  Let  any  improvement  mentioned 
in  these  chapters  be  instituted,  and  the  money 
of  the  people  spent  in  public  benefits  will  au- 
tomatically find  its  way  into  the  values  of 
lands — to  be  paid  over  and  over  again  to 
landlords  who  do  nothing  to  help  production, 
but  much  to  halt  it  by  their  powers  of  appro- 
priation. Is  it  not  plain  that  before  the  world 
can  go  on  with  all  the  tremendous  and  needed 
works  demanded  by  the  welfare  of  all,  some 
method  must  be  adopted  by  which  the  values 
created  by  the  expenditure  of  the  people's 
moneys  and  energies  may  be  secured  to  public 
and  beneficent  ends,  rather  than  diverted  to 

336 


THE  WATER  COURSES 

private  and  in  most  cases  noxious  ones?    Prog- 
ress waits  the  new  system's  birth. 

There  is  a  Hindu  proverb  quoted  by  Henry 
George  which  runs:  "White  parasols  and 
elephants  mad  with  pride  are  the  flowers  of 
a  grant  of  land."  The  parasols  become  whiter 
and  the  elephants  still  madder  with  the  pride 
of  wealth  when  such  a  grant  becomes  the  re- 
cipient of  government  favors. 

And  now  we  have  come,  by  fifty  ways,  to 
the  greatest  question  of  all. 

This  great  globular  air-ship  on  which  we 
are  embarked  on  our  voyage  from  birth  to 
death,  but  to  no  possible  shore  leave  or  dis- 
embarkation, has  been  considered  in  these  dis- 
solving views  of  our  relations  to  it  and  to  each 
other,  as  the  one  thing  of  prime  importance 
to  the  race.  We  are  passengers  on  the  good 
ship  Earth,  but  we  are  also  portions  of  the 
ship.  Nothing  is  so  important  to  us  as  our  re- 
lations to  it.  The  woman  yet  to  become  a 
mother  is  no  more  essential  to  the  unborn  than 
is  the  earth  to  human  kind.  How  we  shall  live 

337 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

with  reference  to  it  is  almost  all  there  is  to 
the  material  side  of  human  life,  individual 
and  collective,  present  and  prospective.  The 
wick  or  dynamo  is  no  more  vital  to  the  light 
than  is  the  earth  to  us — and  to  every  other  ani- 
mal and  plant. 

Just  now  we  spoke  of  the  Assouan  dam, 
and  the  way  its  benefits  have  been  seized  upon 
by  landlords.  Sir  Charles  W.  Macara,  re- 
turning from  a  congress  devoted  to  the  ques- 
tion of  the  promotion  of  the  growing  of  cot- 
ton was  recently  interviewed  in  the  Man- 
chester Guardian,  and  said  of  this  same  irri- 
gation project:  "It  is  of  little  benefit  to  the 
general  community  if  most  of  the  profits  are 
swept,  in  the  shape  of  rent,  into  the  pockets 
of  land  speculators." 

I  wonder  if  Sir  Charles  Macara  would  have 
recognized  in  the  every-day  life  of  Great 
Britain,  or  if  the  reader  will  detect  in  that  of 
his  city,  town,  village  or  rural  township  the 
same  universal  presence,  the  same  great  evil 
which  appears  so  strikingly  in  the  case  of  the 
Assouan  dam?  It  is  more  difficult  to  see  the 

338 


THE  WATER  COURSES 

thing  close  to  our  own  eyes,  but  once  seen,  this 
thing  can  never  be  forgotten.  The  man  who 
is  able  to  collect  pay  for  the  use  of  land  al- 
ways reaps  where  he  has  not  sown,  and  eats 
his  bread  in  the  sweat  of  other  men's  brows. 
It  makes  no  difference  how  honestly  he  may 
have  come  by  the  land,  or  by  how  much  hard 
work,  the  case  is  the  same.  Land  values  are 
always  derived  from  the  labors  and  the  pres- 
ence of  the  community,  and  never  from  the 
efforts  of  the  owner.  I  am  not  speaking  of  his 
improvements,  his  fences,  his  plowings,  ma- 
nurings,  drainings  or  plantings— I  mean  the 
charge  he  is  able  to  make  for  the  use  of  the 
land  as  God  made  it. 

Rent  has  always  been  the  only  permanent 
basis  for  a  hereditary  aristocracy  or  a  leisure 
class.  When  the  first  man  encloses  the  best 
bit  of  land,  and  says,  "This  is  mine!"  it  begins 
to  turn  unearned  wealth  into  the  hands  of  non- 
workers  and  take  the  earned  wealth  out  of  the 
hands  of  workers.  Through  all  history  it  has 
steadily  worked  to  heave  high  the  House  of 
Have  and  to  press  low  the  House  of  Want. 

339 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

Its  power  to  oppress  the  masses  is  now  ob- 
scured by  corporate  organization  of  wealth, 
and  befogged  by  the  increase  of  tools  and  fac- 
tories; but  such  things  as  railways,  shipping 
trusts,  manufacturing  trusts  and  mining  and 
lumbering  trusts  will  be  found  based  on  land 
ownership  so  far,  I  believe,  as  they  have  much 
power  to  oppress. 

When  land  falls  into  that  absolute  form  of 
private  ownership  of  which  I  speak,  a  wedge 
is  at  once  inserted  between  the  landowning 
and  the  landless  classes,  which  every  day's 
progress  drives  in  farther,  lifting  the  land- 
owning classes  higher  and  higher,  and  tending 
to  press  the  landless  lower  and  lower.  It  is 
an  economic  truth  which  is  self-evident  and 
undeniable,  that  as  society  is  developed,  and 
the  use  of  land  pushed  nearer  to  the  limit  of 
the  absolutely  useless,  that  which  is  available 
for  use,  in  city  and  country,  becomes  higher 
in  price  if  bought  and  sold,  and  higher  in  rent 
if  leased. 

Farm  land  in  the  middle  west  of  the  United 
340 


THE  WATER  COURSES 

States  may  rent  now  for  ten  dollars  per  acre 
annually — some  of  it  does.  I  remember  when 
that  same  land  rented  for  one-tenth  of  that 
sum.  I  have  seen  it  leased  for  a  quarter  of 
the  crop — now  it  can  not  be  obtained  for  the 
half.  Yet  the  land  will  not  produce  more 
now  than  then ;  the  tenant  has  found  out  how 
to  live  upon  a  less  proportion  of  the  yield,  and 
is  forced  to  do  the  best  he  can  on  that. 

Is  a  schoolhouse  built?  Is  a  church  dedi- 
cated? Is  a  railway  constructed?  Is  oil 
struck?  Is  coal  found?  Is  a  new  crop  de- 
veloped? Do  the  people  become  less  rude  and 
more  civilized  in  some  remote  region?  In 
each  and  every  case,  in  the  case  of  any  imag- 
inable step  in  progress,  it  is  the  landlord  who 
gets  the  money  benefit.  The  case  of  the  As- 
souan dam,  instead  of  being  a  local  condition, 
is  universal,  world-wide.  It  is  time  that  the 
nations  of  the  world  gave  attention  to  the  de- 
velopment of  some  plan  by  which  the  deck 
room  on  the  good  ship  Earth  may  be  par- 
celed out  to  those  who  must  make  local  and 
exclusive  use  of  it;  without  prejudicing  or 

341 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

doing  injustice  either  to  those  who  may  now  be 
willing  to  be  excluded,  or  to  the  unborn  gen- 
erations who  can  not  be  consulted,  but  who 
are  born  into  the  world  with  as  good  a  right 
to  its  use  as  that  possessed  by  the  children  of 
landowners. 

The  thing  is  not  simple  in  application,  but 
the  principle  is.  This  great  Zeppelin  belongs 
to  all  of  us  passengers  alike.  Let  us  think  of 
it  for  a  moment  as  a  great  floating  hotel,  in 
which  some  of  us  have  the  best  and  most  spa- 
cious of  rooms,  some  are  stowaways  in  the 
hold,  some  have  hammocks  in  the  forecastle, 
some  first  cabins,  some  second  cabins,  some 
saloon  staterooms.  We  all  have  equal  natural 
rights  in  her — how  shall  our  unequal  occu- 
pancies be  equalized?  The  answer  would  be 
given  in  five  minutes  by  any  good  high-school 
student.  He  would  say,  "Let  everybody  pay 
rent  for  the  room  he  uses,  and  divide  the 
fund!" 

Suppose  it  to  be  an  office  building,  owned 
in  common  by  its  tenants.  The  drug-store  in 
the  corner  on  the  street  would  pay  a  high  rent 

342 


THE  WATER  COURSES 

to  the  common  fund.  The  bank  on  the  second 
floor  would  also  pay  at  a  high  rate,  as  would 
the  dry-goods  store.  The  lawyers  and  doctors 
in  the  upper  stories  would  pay  upon  the  value 
of  their  offices,  and  the  cubby-hole  occupied  by 
the  struggling  dentist  near  the  roof  would  pay 
much  less.  Each  would  pay  to  all  the  value 
of  the  room  from  which  he  excluded  all.  Out 
of  the  fund  would  be  paid  insurance,  up-keep, 
watchman,  elevator  boys,  janitors,  scrub- 
women, and  all  the  taxes  and  expenses  of  the 
building,  and  the  balance  would  be  returned 
in  equal  dividends.  No  one  would  have  any 
advantage  over  any  other;  the  plan  would  be 
absolutely  equitable,  and  so  plainly  so  that  it 
could  not  fail  to  be  suggested  by  any  intelli- 
gent business  man  to  whom  the  problem  of 
such  common  ownership  with  diverse  and  ex- 
clusive possession  were  propounded. 

Now,  in  spite  of  all  the  complexities  of  so- 
ciety, and  the  hoary  institutions  hallowed  by 
legend  and  ossified  in  the  course  of  history — • 
in  spite  of  everything  which  can  be  urged 
against  the  statement,  the  earth  is  a  great 

343 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

dwelling-place,  owned  in  common,  and  occu- 
pied in  diversity.  The  evils  of  the  situation 
are  plain,  and  the  greatest  step  which  can  be 
taken  to  end  them  seems  to  me  equally  plain. 
The  owners  of  land  everywhere  should  pay 
to  their  co-owners  who  are  excluded  the  an- 
nual rental  value  of  the  privilege  enjoyed. 
Such  a  plan  would  furnish  a  fund  in  case  of 
the  Earth,  as  in  the  case  of  the  ship  or  office 
building,  which  would  pay  all  community 
charges,  and  the  tenancies  of  all  would  be 
equalized.  He  who  had  most  of  the  thing  be- 
longing to  all  would  pay  most.  He  who  had 
little  would  pay  little.  He  who  had  none 
would  pay  nothing.  All  would  be  equally 
benefited  by  the  expenditure  of  the  tax  col- 
lected, all  other  taxes  would  be  abolished,  and 
absolute  justice  would  be  realized  in  the  use 
of  the  earth.  No  one  would,  or  could,  afford 
to  pay  thus  for  the  use  of  land  unless  he  used 
it — and  so  monopoly  of  land  would  be  de- 
stroyed. This  is  the  political  economy  of  the 
future.  In  no  other  way  can  the  consciences 

344 


THE  WATER  COURSES 

of  men  be  long  satisfied  in  their  tenancy  of 
the  decks  of  the  good  ship  Earth. 

Rent  is  the  value  which  inheres  in  the  ex- 
clusive possession  of  land.  It  is  a  natural  and 
inevitable  thing.  It  becomes  oppressive  only 
when  it  is  retained  in  the  wrong  hands.  It 
belongs  in  morals  to  all  men  because  it  is  the 
expression  in  terms  of  value  of  the  benefits  the 
landowner  receives  through  his  exclusion  of 
all  men  from  a  site  which  ethically  belongs 
to  all  men.  If  he  retains  it  as  private  prop- 
erty, he  is  given  an  unjust  advantage  over  his 
fellows.  Landowning,  constituting  as  it  does 
the  royal  road  to  wealth  without  work,  attracts 
the  seekers  after  privilege.  Land  becomes  a 
commodity  sought  more  for  its  unearned  in- 
crement of  value  than  for  use.  It  grows  in 
value  through  every  element  of  progress — in- 
crease of  population,  increased  efficiency  of 
workers,  improvement  in  government,  prog- 
ress in  the  arts  and  sciences,  demand  for  land 
for  purposes  of  speculation.  Every  extension 
of  use  to  poorer  and  poorer  land,  adds  to  the 

345 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

value  of  the  lands  already  in  use — for  the  rent 
line  is  zero,  and  the  land  on  which  the  Wool- 
worth  Building  stands  bears  its  incredible 
price  because  it  is  so  many  degrees  above  zero 
— which  is  land  for  which  nobody  will  pay 
rent.  As  this  zero  falls,  the  values  above  zero 
are  thereby  lifted. 

The  transfer  of  this  enormous  and  ever- 
increasing  body  of  values  to  the  possession  of 
its  real  producers  and  owners,  the  collectivity, 
will  produce  the  most  revolutionary  results. 
It  is  quite  a  different  thing  from  the  so-called 
"single-tax"  of  such  dabblers  in  land-value 
taxation  as  Vancouver  and  many  German  and 
Australasian  towns.  In  Vancouver  the  fiscal 
scheme  of  putting  on  land  values  the  burden 
of  present  taxation  only,  seems  to  have  pro- 
duced a  condition  of  prosperity.  I  have  no 
doubt  that  it  has;  but  I  am  equally  certain  that 
this  prosperity  will  be  short-lived,  unless  a 
social  program  is  adopted  that  will  absorb  all 
the  ground  rents  of  the  city.  As  long  as  land- 
value  taxation  is  adopted  as  a  mere  fiscal 
scheme,  with  an  economical  administration 

346 


THE  WATER  COURSES 

exerting  every  effort  to  keep  taxes  down,  it 
will  always  induce  an  era  of  prosperity  which 
will  finally  prove  self-limiting.  The  limit  will 
be  reached  when  land  speculation  springs 
up  as  it  has  apparently  done  in  Vancouver, 
through  the  growth  of  rent  above  and  beyond 
the  limited  tax. 

But  when  the  full-length  principle  is  adopt- 
ed, a  social  program  must  always  be  followed 
capable  of  absorbing  all  the  ground  rents.  Un- 
der such  a  state  of  affairs,  Vancouver  will 
leave  very  little  value  in  the  hands  of  land- 
owners— under  ideal  conditions,  none.  Every 
one  owning  lands  will  pay  the  full  rental  value 
of  them  to  Vancouver  every  year.  It  may  be 
asked,  Why,  then,  will  any  one  desire  to  own 
lands?  For  the  same  reason  that  men  now  de- 
sire to  pay  ground  rents  to  individuals — for 
the  purpose  of  using  them,  and  for  no  other 
reason  whatsoever.  All  hope  of  profit  from 
mere  ownership  will  by  that  time  have  van- 
ished, and  land-speculation  will  be  at  an  end. 

The  first  effect  of  such  a  system  will  be  the 
elimination  of  all  speculative  value  from 

347 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

lands,  and  a  fall  in  values  to  what  lands  are 
actually  worth,  for  use. 

Something  like  what  has  taken  place  in 
Vancouver  will  occur  everywhere.  Lands  for 
use,  being  easily  acquired,  will  be  improved 
at  a  tremendous  rate.  The  manner  in  which 
Vancouver  swept  past  Seattle,  Victoria,  Ta- 
coma  and  her  other  rivals  in  matter  of  build- 
ing, as  soon  as  she  adopted  land-value  taxa- 
tion, will  be  duplicated  everywhere,  as  the 
human  energies  now  repressed  by  land  mon- 
opoly are  liberated.  And  this  condition  will 
be  permanent,  if  the  governments  adopt  budg- 
ets which  will  absorb  all  ground  rent,  and  thus 
forever  inhibit  speculation  in  sites. 

Land  will  grow  in  value,  with  increase  in 
population — it  will  grow  in  value  over  much 
of  the  earth's  surface  with  great  rapidity. 
Every  increase  in  human  efficiency  will  make 
more  valuable  the  sites  on  which  this  efficiency 
may  be  exercised.  But  this  advance  in  land 
values  will  not  result  in  land-booms  as  in  the 
past,  nor  will  it  enrich  individuals.  It  will 
express  itself  in  the  payment  of  more  and 

348 


THE  WATER  COURSES 

more  of  the  wealth  produced  into  the  coffers 
of  the  government. 

As  the  years  pass,  and  the  rise  in  rents  con- 
tinues, our  government  will  therefore  become 
more  and  more  socialistic.  That  is,  the  line 
properly  dividing  individual  property  and, 
hence,  individual  action  from  collective  prop- 
erty and  action  will  be  constantly  advanced 
toward  collectivism.  Even  to-day,  if  such 
communities  as  England,  Holland  or  New 
York  were  to  transfer  bodily  to  the  public 
coffers  all  their  enormous  ground  rents,  such 
a  proportion  of  the  produced  wealth  would 
go  to  the  common  fund  that  the  proper  ad- 
ministration and  use  of  it  would  socialize  the 
state  to  an  extent  realized  by  very  few  either 
of  the  advocates  of  land-value  taxation  who 
call  themselves  individualists,  or  of  those  so- 
cialists who  regard  it  as  likely  to  produce  only 
unimportant  results  in  the  evolution  of  a  new 
social  order. 


CHAPTER  XXXI 

POVERTY  VS.   MONOPOLY 

IN  these  writings  concerning   the   fate   of 
those  on  board  the  good  ship  Earth  we 
first  sought  the  basis  of  life  and  found  it  in 
the  soil  and  the  water  under  certain  condi- 
tions of  climate. 

We  then  weighed  the  elements  of  food  and 
found  the  old  planet  provided  with  all  that  the 
passengers  are  likely  to  need  if  the  terrestrial 
stock  of  the  goods  of  life  is  properly  con- 
served and  used.  We  looked  into  the  question 
of  the  use  and  the  abuse  of  the  treasures  of 
our  ship's  hold  and  decided  that  the  self-evi- 
dent truth  that  they  belong  to  us  in  common 
must  be  recognized  and  made  effective  to 
every  man  through  institutions  if  the  gross 
evils  from  which  we  have  always  suffered  are 
to  be  remedied.  These  institutions  can  come 
through  the  activities  of  one  form  of  govern- 

350 


POVERTY  VS.  MONOPOLY 

ment  only,  and  that  is  democracy;  because  it 
is  only  in  a  democracy  that  the  ruling  class  as 
a  whole  is  selfishly  interested  in  the  reign  of 
the  principle  of  equality  of  rights  and  oppor- 
tunities. 

In  other  words,  the  welfare  of  all  men  must 
be  attained,  if  at  all,  by  the  rule  of  all  men. 

Universal  welfare  means,  first  of  all,  the  ex- 
tirpation of  poverty.  Many  things  must  be 
added  to  that,  but  that  comes  first  in  any  ra- 
tional scheme  of  social  redemption.  Souls 
are,  no  doubt,  more  important  than  bodies; 
but  the  bodies  which  are  not  fed,  all  over  the 
world,  are  those  in  which  the  souls  are  dark- 
ened and  the  spirits  dead.  Millenniums,  like 
armies,  march  upon  their  stomachs. 

I  have  looked  upon  monopoly  as  the  cause 
of  poverty.  It  seems  to  me  that  the  poverty 
with  which  most  of  us  are  familiar  is  clearly 
due  to  monopoly,  and  to  that  alone.  The 
monopoly  of  land  turns  into  private  hands  all 
those  stupendous  rivers  of  wealth  which  would 
be  distributed  to  all  men  if  we  as  a  people 
received  each  year  from  those  who  exclude  us 

351 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

the  value  of  the  privilege  in  such  monopoly. 
This  seems  to  me  to  account  for  all  the  poverty 
we  have,  at  least  we  of  the  western  world. 
In  other  words,  it  seems  perfectly  clear  to 
me  that  we  could  carry  all  other  parasites, 
though  of  course  we  ought  not  to  do  so,  if  we 
were  rid  of  the  exactions  of  those  who  own 
our  city  lots,  our  water-fronts  and  terminals, 
our  forest  lands,  our  mineral  lands,  our  power 
sites,  our  factory  sites  and  our  agricultural 
lands. 

Moreover,  if  all  the  other  parasites  were  ex- 
terminated, the  land  monopoly  would  at  once 
swallow  up  the  benefits  of  the  riddance,  and 
we  should  be  no  better  off  than  now,  save  for 
the  simplicity  of  the  situation. 

But  in  addition  to  the  basic  monopoly  of 
the  decks  of  the  good  ship  Earth,  there  are  a 
thousand  other  monopolies.  There  is  the  great 
semi-land-monopoly  of  the  railways.  There 
are  tariff-bred  monopolies.  There  are  the  lit- 
tle fly-bite  monopolies  of  the  patent  office. 
There  are  money  trusts  and  shipping  trusts. 
There  are  huge  aggregations  of  tools  like  those 

352 


POVERTY  VS.  MONOPOLY 

of  the  steel  trust.  Some  say  that  the  owner- 
ship of  tools  would  alone  enslave  the  work- 
ers. This  may  be  so — but  common  ownership 
of  tools  would  do  the  workers  no  good  at  all 
so  long  as  land  is  monopolized.  Until  that  un- 
derlying monopoly  is  abolished  and  a  just  sys- 
tem of  land  tenure  put  into  effect  the  success 
of  those  who  seek  better  things  for  the  masses 
will  serve  no  good  purpose  except  to  strip  the 
disguises  from  the  great  robber  "who  takes 
all  that  is  left,"  no  matter  how  much  it  may 
be.  A  just  land  system  may  open  the  way  for 
the  cooperative  commonwealth — which,  if 
erected  upon  our  present  land  system,  so  far 
as  it  succeeded,  would  only  enrich  landlords. 
The  workers  of  Ghent  have  established  the 
cooperative  commonwealth  in  almost  every- 
thing save  land;  and  have  made  their  land- 
lords richer  than  ever. 

Cooperation  is  an  improvement  in  produc- 
tion. By  it  the  middlemen  are  eliminated, 
duplication  of  labor  is  lessened,  division  of 
labor  is  increased,  production  is  systema- 
tized; but  no  possible  perfection  of  cooper- 

353 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

ation  can  hope  to  do  as  much  in  the  line  of 
cheapening  the  things  needed  by  the  people 
as  has  been  done  by  the  progress  and  inven- 
tion of  the  past  two  hundred  years,  in  science, 
the  arts,  in  transportation,  in  finance,  in  the 
opening  up  of  new  lands,  in  labor  saving  ma- 
chinery. In  the  absence  of  a  just  system  of 
land  tenure  these  wonderful  advances  have 
failed  to  help  the  masses  to  a  free  and  unfear- 
ing  life — but  rents  have  gone  up  enormously, 
and  the  purchase-price  of  lands  has  soared. 
So  with  the  cooperative  commonwealth — it 
will  be  an  improvement  in  production ;  but  we 
have  had  a  hundred  improvements  in  that 
which  have  done  the  workers  no  good;  it  will 
simplify  distribution;  but  no  more  than  the 
railway  and  the  steamship  and  the  dynamo, 
none  of  which  has  lightened  the  burdens  of 
poverty;  it  will  prevent  duplication  of  effort, 
but  so  do  the  trusts.  With  a  just  system  of 
land  tenure  the  progress  of  science  and  the 
arts  would  have  abolished  poverty;  and  with 
such  a  just  basis  for  life,  the  cooperative  com- 

354 


POVERTY  VS.  MONOPOLY 

monwealth  will  carry  us  to  heights  we  can  not 
otherwise  attain. 

With  monopoly  abolished,  and  with  society 
organized  on  the  basis  of  a  fraternal  democ- 
racy, will  poverty  be  at  an  end? 

Unless  it  is  at  an  end,  our  social  travail  will 
have  been  in  vain.  We  shall  have  opened  the 
natural  opportunities  which  the  earth  offers 
freely  to  all.  We  shall  have  so  organized  ex- 
change and  distribution  as  to  eliminate  all  pos- 
sible wastes.  We  shall  have  ended  the  sys- 
tem by  which  one  man  makes  a  profit  on 
the  labor  of  another.  We  shall  have  secured 
to  every  worker  the  full  product  of  his  labor. 
And  we  shall  have  made  labor  universal. 

Poverty  could  not  persist  under  such  con- 
ditions, except  as  the  result  of  the  multiplica- 
tion of  population  to  the  point  beyond  which 
the  earth  is  unable  to  support  the  people.  Uni- 
versal comfort,  universal  education,  universal 
enlightenment,  the  complexity  of  life  which 
so  highly  developed  a  society  would  necessi- 
tate, would  tend  to  cut  down  the  birth-rate — 

355 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

just  as  it  is  now  cut  down  in  the  most  "com- 
fortably-fixed" portions  of  society. 

But  the  extirpation  of  monopoly  must  go 
along  with  general  enlightenment,  not  only  in 
the  nation,  but  in  the  whole  world,  or  there 
will  always  remain  those  wo  rid  slums  in  which 
the  unfit  breed  and  spawn  in  poverty  and  ig- 
norance. I  do  not  believe  that  there  is  much 
danger  that  we  of  the  United  States,  of  Great 
Britain  and  Ireland,  of  France,  Germany, 
Italy,  Austria — of  all  the  most  advanced  na- 
tions of  this  age — will  fail  to  redeem  our- 
selves from  monopoly  and  its  consequent  pov- 
erty, and  to  attain  a  balance  of  births  and 
deaths,  long  before  we  have  out-multiplied 
our  means  of  sustenance;  but  I  do  think  that 
in  Asia,  in  Africa,  and  in  some  parts  of  Eu- 
rope there  are  great  peoples  who  are  already 
near  the  limits  of  subsistence,  or  even  pressing 
against  it,  or  so  low  in  development  as  appar- 
ently to  require  ages  to  reach  the  point  of  de- 
creasing fecundity.  Some  of  these  have  be- 
liefs concerning  the  desirability  of  large  fam- 
ilies of  children  which  are  recognized  by 

356 


POVERTY  VS.  MONOPOLY 

such  statesmen  as  Yuan  Shi  Kai  as  barriers  to 
improvement  in  circumstances.  It  seems  to 
me  that  along  with  our  own  problems,  we 
more  fortunate  passengers  on  the  good  ship 
Earth  must  assume  the  burden  of  lifting  these 
nations  up.  Otherwise  our  very  millennium 
will  be  their  opportunity  to  overrun  the  world 
in  sheer  weight  of  numbers — and  plunge  it 
lower  than  ever  in  hopeless  poverty.  Or  we 
may  be  presented  with  the  awful  alternative 
of  racial  submergence,  or  the  segregation  of 
these  unfortunate  races  from  the  rest  of  the 
earth's  peoples  forever,  by  force  of  arms. 


CHAPTER  XXXII 

THE  NIGHTMARE  OF  MILITARISM 

THERE  is  a  widespread  feeling  that  the 
nations  of  the  world  are  about  to  aban- 
don the  policy  of  maintaining  armies  and 
navies.  The  conscience  of  the  enlightened 
people  of  the  world  is  in  revolt  against  wars. 
The  common  sense  of  the  masses  who  furnish 
the  food  for  powder  is  now  directed  to  the 
question  of  motives.  "What  is  there  in  this 
fight  for  me?"  is  in  the  minds  of  more  and 
more  men  of  military  age  every  year. 

The  competition  between  the  British  Em- 
pire and  the  German  Empire  in  military  arm- 
ament is  a  heart-breaking  struggle,  like  that  of 
two  athletes  breathing  hard  on  some  bitterly 
contested  field.  These  great  peoples  are  mak- 
ing the  pace;  but  there  is  no  great  nation 
which  is  not  enrolled  in  the  tremendous  event. 
Russia's  army  and  France's  army  and  navy 

358 


MILITARISM 

are  the  right  and  left  wing  of  the  forces  of  the 
Triple  Entente,  with  Japan's  in  reserve.  Italy 
is  grinding  her  people  into  the  very  dust  of 
poverty  with  taxes  for  the  support  of  Ger- 
many's left  wing,  and  Austria-Hungary  is 
straining  every  nerve  on  the  kaiser's  right  as 
the  forces  of  the  Triple  Alliance  pass  in  re- 
view. The  Balkan  States  have  been  armed 
camps  for  years  in  preparation  for  their  as- 
sault on  Turkey,  and  will  be  for  years  to  come. 
Even  decadent  Spain,  the  strictly  commercial 
Low  Countries,  little  Portugal,  and  neutral 
Denmark,  Switzerland  and  the  Norse  coun- 
tries are  carrying  their  loads  of  militarism. 
1  A  statement  recently  cabled  to  this  country 
from  Germany  shows  something  of  the  ter- 
rible burdens  of  "military  preparedness". 
Privy  Councilor  Schwartz,  feeling  called 
upon  to  repudiate  the  assertion  that  Germany 
is  forcing  other  nations  into  this  competition, 
shows  that  his  empire  is  paying  out  less  in 
proportion  to  her  population  than  Great  Brit- 
ain and  France.  The  casuistry  in  this  is  per- 
fectly plain,  since  the  weaker  nation  in  popu- 

359 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

lation  might  feel  obliged  to  make  up  for  lack 
of  numbers  by  excess  of  ships  and  guns.  Cer- 
tainly, military  preparedness  is  not  a  game  in 
which  weakness  in  one  respect  can  be  urged 
as  a  reason  for  weakness  in  any  other.  But 
the  fact  that  since  1881  France  has  spent 
$500,000,000  more  than  Germany  is  a  startling 
preparation  for  the  assertion  that  in  the  last 
thirty  years  the  Triple  Entente — Great  Brit- 
ain, Russia  and  France — has  spent  more  than 
eighteen  thousand  millions  of  dollars,  while 
the  Triple  Alliance — Germany,  Austria  and 
Italy — has  expended  more  than  eleven  thou- 
sand five  hundred  millions  in  militarism. 

The  people  of  Germany,  according  to  this 
statement,  will  be  called  upon  to  pay  five  dol- 
lars and  ninety  cents  per  capita  for  militarism 
in  the  present  year,  while  every  man,  woman 
and  child  in  France  will  contribute  seven  dol- 
lars and  fifty  cents.  This  seems  to  be  ex- 
clusive of  the  milliards  of  bonds  which  bear 
interest  now,  and  at  some  time  in  the  future 
will  necessarily  have  to  be  taken  care  of  as  to 
principal,  unless  the  masses  bow  under  the 

360 


MILITARISM 

permanent  yoke  of  an  interest-eating  leisure 
class. 

This  present-day  militarism  is  a  mixed  ques- 
tion of  pseudo-patriotism,  actual  national  ne- 
cessities and  high  finance.  There  is  no  ques- 
tion that  in  some  cases  the  nations  are  now, 
and  for  centuries  have  been,  in  the  position 
of  making  choice  between  national  extinction 
and  preparedness  for  war.  What  would  have 
happened,  for  instance,  to  France,  two  hun- 
dred years  ago,  had  she  failed  to  maintain 
military  readiness  against  the  aggressions  of 
England?  Or  of  Holland  as  against  Spain? 
The  state  of  the  smaller  nations  of  Europe 
to-day  would  be  no  less  perilous,  were  it  not 
for  the  mutual  jealousies  of  the  government 
trusts,  and  the  spread  of  internationalism  in 
sentiment  in  such  ways  as  peace  societies  and 
socialism.  Sweden  and  Norway  are  coveted 
by  Russia  in  her  age-long  desire  for  a  seaport 
free  from  ice.  Denmark  and  the  Low  Coun- 
tries seem  to  the  Germans  logically  parts  of 
their  great  empire.  Panslavism  looks  in  the 
direction  of  a  union  of  all  the  Slavic  peoples 

361 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

— probably  under  the  czar.  Alsace-Lorraine 
has  scarcely  become  completely  Germanized. 
The  Poles  aspire  to  a  restoration  of  the  king- 
dom of  John  Sobieski.  In  fact  the  whole  Eu- 
ropean situation  is  held  in  statu  quo  by  the 
force  of  standing  armies  and  huge  navies. 

All  this  is  the  effect  of  perverted  patriotism 
— that  patriotism  which  is  more  vice  than  vir- 
tue. No  inhabitant  of  the  German  Empire 
would  be  better  off  were  the  Low  Countries 
and  Denmark  absorbed.  The  desire  of  Rus- 
sia for  an  ice-free  port  is  a  legitimate  one,  and 
should  be  fulfilled  by  the  opening  of  the  nar- 
row seas  past  Constantinople,  and  by  free 
trade  to  and  through  the  seaports  of  other 
lands.  The  people  of  Alsace-Lorraine  are  as 
well  off  under  one  flag  as  another,  given  just 
government,  and  under  industrial  and  trade 
freedom  would  feel  as  contented.  Poland  is 
entitled  to  freedom  as  a  matter  of  justice,  but 
would  soon  forget  her  aspirations  if  given 
just  institutions  under  the  flags  now  floating 
over  her.  The  desires  of  subject  peoples  for 

362 


MILITARISM 

governments  of  their  own  are  based  upon  very 
deep  and  powerful  instincts,  and  where  it  is 
territorially  possible,  might  be  granted  with- 
out loss  to  their  present  yoke-fellows;  but 
where  industrial  exploitation  is  absent,  sub- 
jection is  neither  profitable  to  the  governing 
class  of  the  ruling  nation,  nor  permanently 
offensive  to  the  people  absorbed.  And  in  such 
cases  as  the  Greek,  Bulgar,  Serb  and  Ruma- 
nian populations  of  the  Balkans  separate  gov- 
ernments are  impossible  owing  to  the  scatter- 
ing of  the  original  stocks  and  their  mingling 
with  one  another.  It  is  a  perverted  patriotism 
which  would  arm  one  against  the  other  in  the 
name  of  nationality.  Just  governments  inter 
se  are  the  only  solution.  It  is  perverted  pa- 
triotism which  arms  the  English  against  the 
Germans  or  vice  versa,  because  neither  has 
anything  which  the  other  needs,  and  neither 
is  possessed  of  a  legitimate  ambition  in  the 
way  of  which  the  other  legitimately  stands. 
It  is  a  case  of  the  ruling  classes  working  on 
false  patriotism  for  selfish  ends.  The  common 

363 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

man  has  no  interest  in  these  objects,  and  the 
national  welfare  is  not  truly  concerned  there- 
with. 

This  pseudo-patriotism  is  dear  to  the  hearts 
of  millions  who  merely  know  no  better.  Mon- 
eyed interests  of  the  most  enormous  extent  are 
built  up  on  militarism  and  the  objects  of  mili- 
tary aggression.  There  is  no  good  to  the  Ger- 
man people  in  African  or  Asiatic  expansion; 
but  there  is  money  in  it  for  German  capital- 
ists. There  was  no  benefit  to  the  people  of 
Belgium  in  the  Congo,  but  King  Leopold  be- 
came a  millionaire  out  of  it.  There  are  rubber 
and  ivory,  and  sugar  lands,  and  inoffensive  and 
feeble  peoples  to  be  enslaved  for  the  ruling 
classes  of  the  aggressive  nations,  and  loss  for 
the  nation  at  large:  loss  of  life,  loss  of  honor, 
loss  of  humanity,  loss  of  every  sort.  When 
these  things  are  thoroughly  worked  out  by 
the  masses,  the  average  man  will  ask  himself, 
"What  is  there  in  this  for  me?"  and  this  phase 
of  false  patriotism  will  be  ended. 

The  moneyed  classes  are  interested  to  an 
enormous  extent  in  the  loans  of  funds  for  the 

364 


MILITARISM 

up-keep  of  militarism.  The  names  of  Roth- 
schild and  Morgan  are  synonymous  with  gov- 
ernment loans.  These  gentry  verily  do  not  burn 
incense  on  the  altars  of  patriotism  for  naught. 
And  while  lending  money  for  armaments,  they 
are  making  money  out  of  the  building  of  arma- 
ment. The  money  the  house  of  Morgan  loans 
to  a  government  for  war-ships  is  paid  back, 
less  commissions,  interests  and  profits,  for  the 
ships  built  by  the  steel  companies  owned  by 
the  house  of  Morgan.  Krupp  is  the  typical 
German  millionaire,  and  the  Krupp  millions 
come  from  cannon  and  war-ships.  These  are 
the  merest  hints  as  to  the  manifold  moneyed 
interests  that  feed  and  fatten  on  the  policy  of 
militarism.  When  the  masses  acquire  the 
habit  of  asking  themselves,  "What  is  there  in 
this  for  us?"  the  incitements  of  this  class  and 
their  fuglemen  to  war  and  preparedness  for 
war  will  no  longer  thrill  our  young  men  into 
khaki. 

And  yet,  I  do  not  see  the  end  of  militarism. 
I  believe  that  the  militarism  of  the  present 
day  is  ninety  per  cent,  without  logical  excuse ; 

365 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

but  I  see  also  a  possibility  for  a  readjustment 
of  militarism  to  conditions  under  which  it  will 
be  justified  in  the  minds  of  the  masses  who  ask 
themselves,  "What  is  there  in  it  for  me?"  I 
wish  I  could  see  the  way  to  universal  disarma- 
ment in  the  near  future,  but  even  should  inter- 
nationalism obtain  control  of  the  military  na- 
tions of  the  world,  I  am  unable  to  see  more 
than  a  lull  in  the  storm  and  a  readjustment  of 
factors. 

The  Balkan  States  were  justified  in  main- 
taining a  state  of  preparedness  against  the 
Turks,  unless  we  adopt  the  theory  of  non- 
resistance.  There  may  have  been  high  finance 
and  false  patriotism  commingled  with  the  real 
justification ;  but  the  presence  of  the  Turk  en- 
camped in  military  tyranny  over  the  Balkan 
peoples  constituted  an  intolerable  status.  It 
was  a  case  of  forcible  commingling  of  irrecon- 
cilable human  elements.' 

The  world  as  a  whole  is  in  an  unstable  con- 
dition as  to  the  distribution  of  the  races  over 
it.  Some  European  nations  are  said  to  be  over- 
populated.  Probably  in  most  if  not  all  of 

366 


MILITARISM 

these  cases  the  disease  is  land-monopoly, 
rather  than  over-population.  But  land-mon- 
opoly and  social  maladjustments  produce  pre- 
maturely all  the  phenomena  of  pressure  of 
population,  and  make  the  peoples  equally  rest- 
ive for  new  lands.  It  matters  little  whether 
the  pressure  on  the  people  of  Russia,  Poland, 
Hungary  and  Italy  is  factitious  or  natural,  as 
long  as  it  drives  them  to  foreign  lands.  If 
factitious,  it  could  be  cured  by  reforms  at 
home,  as  the  tendency  to  emigrate  from  Ger- 
many, Scandinavia  and  the  British  Isles  has 
largely  been  cured;  but  as  long  as  it  lasts,  it 
sets  up  immigration  problems  in  such  nations 
as  Argentina  and  the  United  States,  to  which 
the  emigrants  are  flocking. 

Such  commingling  of  populations,  without 
any  racial  affinity,  and  bringing  into  conflict 
possible  racial  antipathies,  are  of  less  conse- 
quence under  autocratic  governments  than  in 
democracies.  In  view  of  the  fact  that  democ- 
racy seems  to  be  not  only  the  natural  form  of 
government,  but  the  form  which  is  conquering 
the  world,  racial  admixtures  are  sure  to  be- 

367 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

come  more  and  more  fruitful  of  governmental 
problems.  The  fact  that  the  countries  now 
most  clearly  over-populated  are  peopled  by 
races  possessed  of  weak  affinities,  or  none,  for 
the  democracies  occupying  the  largest  areas 
of  sparsely-settled  land  and  offering  the  most 
attractive  industrial  prospects,  and  moreover, 
feel  certain  strong  antipathies  for  them,  is 
ominous.  The  democracies  of  the  New 
World  and  of  Australasia  will  be  forced  by 
the  law  of  national  self-preservation  to  keep 
out  the  millions  of  folk  of  other  colors  and 
alien  ideals  who  are  ready  to  be  shot  into 
their  respective  bodies  politic  by  the  force  of 
economic  stress,  like  a  drug  into  a  vein  by  a 
hypodermic  needle.  They  must  do  this. 
Their  precious  experiment  in  democracy  re- 
quires it.  They  have  good  reason  to  believe 
that  in  fighting  against  national  dilution  and 
contamination  they  are  battling  for  a  principle 
as  important  to  the  colored  races  as  to  the 
white — a  world  principle. 

Can    universal    disarmament    be    brought 
about  while  this  condition  persists?    It  seems 

368 


MILITARISM 

to  me  very  doubtful.  It  seems  to  me  that  the 
time  is  rather  far  off  when  the  masses  of  the 
people  will  be  able  to  disclaim  interest  in  a 
certain  sort  of  military  preparedness. 

I  should  not  be  willing  to  disband  our 
armies  and  stigmatize  military  training  as  the 
silly  thing  it  would  be  if  there  were  no  better 
excuse  for  it  than  the  European  balance  of 
power,  or  the  extension  of  trade.  I  should  be 
afraid.  Until  this  enormous  matter  of  the  dis- 
tribution of  the  races  is  settled,  we  shall  keep 
up  a  certain  sort  of  militarism,  be  sure  of  that. 

The  question  is  likely  to  be :  What  sort  of 
militarism?  All  institutions  must  sooner  or 
later  be  transformed  so  as  to  accord  with  the 
principles  of  democracy — or  they  must  be 
abolished.  The  great  objection  to  standing 
armies  is  their  conflict  with  democracy.  They 
are  essentially  aristocratic  in  their  traditions. 
The  officers  must  always  be  "gentlemen"  and 
the  privates  merely  men.  The  social  supe- 
riority of  officer  over  man  is  something  enor- 
mous. Every  day's  service  tends  to  make  the 
man  in  the  ranks  a  servile  creature,  and  the 

369 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

man  with  epaulettes  a  snob  and  a  tyrant. 
Moreover,  armies  are  used  by  the  capitalistic 
governments  of  the  world  for  the  purpose 
of  overawing  the  masses  of  the  people — the 
voters.  The  republics  of  the  world  are  found- 
ed on  what  has  been  called  the  sacred  right  of 
rebellion;  but  they  have  set  up  in  their  midst 
standing  armies  to  take  away  that  right  from 
the  present  generation.  When  one  considers 
that  rebellion  is  always  a  demand  for  rights, 
this  situation  is  anomalous. 

But  the  army  need  not  be  undemocratic,  nor 
out  of  touch  with  the  sentiments  of  the  masses. 
It  may  well  be  the  masses.  Some  of  the  most 
efficient  armies  the  world  ever  saw  have  been 
democratic  armies — Cromwell's,  for  instance. 
Obedience  on  the  part  of  the  rank  and  file  to 
the  officers  need  not  imply  any  social  chasm 
between  the  two. 

Democracy  requires  that  the  army  be  de- 
mocratized. This  implies  no  slackening  of 
discipline,  but  calls  for  a  revolution  in  ideals. 
The  army  of  a  democracy  should  offer  a  serv- 

370 


MILITARISM 

ice  in  which  the  best  young  men  should  be  glad 
to  enter.  There  are  certain  military  organiza- 
tions membership  in  which,  owing  to  certain 
flubdubbery,  is  a  social  honor.  Membership 
in  the  army  of  a  democracy  should  be  made  so 
useful  to  the  soldier,  and  so  beneficial  to  so- 
ciety as  a  whole,  as  to  be  looked  upon  as  a 
thing  to  be  desired  by  all  young  men.  Rank 
should  separate  men  only  while  on  duty.  The 
whole  organization  should  be  based  on  the 
idea  of  educating  the  soldier  in  citizenship  and 
developing  him  as  a  producer  and  a  man. 

This  change  might  easily  be  effectuated. 
The  life  of  the  soldier  under  most  military 
rules  is  of  all  lives  the  most  dreary  and  dead- 
ening. The  time  which  he  can  profitably  use 
in  the  practise  of  soldiership  is  only  a  small 
portion  of  the  day.  The  regulations  have 
therefore  imposed  upon  him  a  great  many 
arbitrary  duties  which  have  no  real  relation 
to  mastery  of  the  soldier's  trade,  but  are  meant 
to  keep  them  busy  and  out  of  mischief.  They 
are  about  as  useful  as  the  old  task  of  pounding 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

the  rust  off  the  anchor  chains  which  strict  sea- 
captains  imposed  on  their  sailors  during  fine 
weather. 

The  armies  of  democracies  should  be  the 
greatest  educational  institutions  of  the  nations. 
Instead  of  wasting  their  youthful  years  in 
time-killing,  soul-killing  routine,  the  soldiers 
should  be  also  students.  Every  course  of  study 
now  given  by  universities  might  be  mastered 
by  the  citizen  soldiery.  There  is  no  branch 
of  learning  that  should  not  be  successfully 
taught  in  the  army  posts  of  the  future.  The 
culture  thus  given  might  be  evidenced  by  de- 
grees as  honorable  and  valuable  to  their  pos- 
sessors as  those  conferred  by  any  educational 
institution  in  the  world. 

In  the  main,  the  training  in  the  armies  will 
be  vocational  and  technical,  however.  There 
is  no  reason  why  armies  should  not  grow  their 
own  subsistence,  and  manufacture  their  own 
equipment  as  a  part  of  the  vocational  training 
of  the  citizens  of  the  republic.  There  is  no 
reason  why  scientific  agriculture  should  not 
be  taught  to  every  farmer's  son  fortunate 

372 


MILITARISM 

enough  to  get  into  the  army — and  to  every 
city  boy  desirous  of  getting  back  to  the  land. 
There  is  no  reason  why  every  handicraft,  every 
profession,  every  art,  should  not  be  taught  to 
men  earning  their  educations  by  service  as 
soldiers.  There  is  no  reason  why  graduation 
from  the  army  should  not  be  proof  of  fitness 
for  productive  citizenship,  and  the  best  pos- 
sible recommendation  to  prospective  em- 
ployers. 

Such  an  army  would  be  only  a  little  more 
military  than  are  some  of  our  corps  of  college 
cadets.  Such  soldiers  would  not  require  pay. 
They  would  be  willing  to  pay  for  the  training, 
rather  than  be  deprived  of  it. 

England  might  keep  a  million  men  in  camp 
all  the  time  by  such  a  system.  And  they  would 
melt  back  into  the  industrial  system  of  the 
land  at  the  rate  of  a  quarter  of  a  million  a 
year,  and  repay  to  the  last  penny  the  expense 
of  their  education  in  their  greater  industrial 
efficiency.  The  United  States  could  keep  two 
million  young  men  under  arms  all  the  time, 
and  the  burden  would  really  be  only  a  part  of 

373 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

the  universal  duty  of  education.  Gradually 
in  both  these  nations,  and  in  all  others  adopt- 
ing the  system,  the  thing  which  Frederick  the 
Great  accomplished  in  Prussia  would  be  man- 
ifest— the  citizenship  of  the  nation,  as  a  whole, 
would  be  transformed  into  a  body  of  trained 
soldiers.  Thus,  and  in  some  such  way  only 
can  democracy  and  military  preparedness  be 
reconciled. 

The  problem  is  one,  not  of  offense,  but  of 
(defense.  This  sort  of  militarism  is  merely  a 
matter  of  preparedness  against  the  aggressions 
of  other  peoples.  Those  aggressions  are  likely 
to  take  the  form  at  first  of  protests  against  the 
exclusion  of  emigrants.  Such  exclusions  must 
be  reasonable,  but  when  determined  upon,  they 
must  be  firmly  adhered  to.  Adhesion  to  them 
requires  no  aggression,  no  expeditions  to  for- 
eign shores,  nothing  except  the  ability  to  de- 
fend ourselves. 

Such  militarism  will  be  a  matter  of  forti- 
fications and  artillery,  with  a  mighty  army 
backing  them.  Naval  disarmament  seems 
quite  out  of  the  question  for  some  nations,  but 

374 


MILITARISM 

is  not  irreconcilable  with  the  principles  here 
laid  down,  save  for  widely  disseminated  peo- 
ples like  the  English.  For  them  the  matter 
is  exceedingly  difficult.  Under  present  condi- 
tions pseudo-patriotism,  high  finance  and  a 
scattered  Englishry  render  naval  disarmament 
impossible. 

But  at  bottom  navies  are  instruments  of  ag- 
gression, and  will  not  be  needed  on  any  such 
scale  as  that  on  which  they  are  now  main- 
tained, when  military  power  is  used  for  the 
one  purpose  of  self-defense. 

The  kings  of  finance  may  not  always  care  to 
furnish  funds  for  great  navies.  They  now  pre- 
fer a  situation  in  which  there  shall  be  constant 
preparation  for  war — for  they  make  profits  on 
that — but  no  actual  war.  For  in  actual  war 
the  money  power,  furnishing  funds  for  both 
sides,  is  in  the  position  of  placing  bets  on  two 
contestants  and  taking  a  commission  for  the 
work,  with  the  possibility  of  becoming  so 
deeply  involved  that  if  one  side  becomes  bank- 
rupt the  money  power  will  lose  enormously. 
The  whole  matter  of  moral  obligations  as  to 

375 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

the  payment  of  bonds  issued  under  the  circum- 
stances now  prevailing  must  sooner  or  later  be 
reexamined.  One  of  these  days  public  credit 
will  not  be  so  high.  Navies  are  shockingly 
costly  things.  The  development  of  aerial  navi- 
gation is  about  to  revolutionize  war,  and  seems 
to  promise  a  permanent  transfer  of  headship 
in  war  from  the  nation  leading  in  sea  power  to 
the  one  with  the  most  powerful  air  navy. 
When  the  air-ship  renders  the  man-of-war  ob- 
solete, military  operations  will  shift  from  sea 
to  land,  and  navies  will  sink  in  importance. 


CHAPTER  XXXIII 

SOCIAL  OLD  AGE  AND  DEATH 

NO  belief  is  more  generally  accepted 
than  that  which  assigns  to  nations  pe- 
riods of  birth,  youth,  maturity,  decline  and 
death.  We  speak  of  the  Americans  as  being 
a  "young  people",  and  the  Chinese  and  Jap- 
anese as  being  "old  peoples".  We  seem  to 
carry  in  our  minds  a  thought  with  regard  to 
the  United  States,  or  Germany,  or  England, 
that  each  must  in  the  nature  of  things  pass 
away  in  a  sort  of  social  death,  just  as  Hiram 
Perkins,  Hans  Schmidt  and  Thomas  Atkins 
must  pass  away. 

This  is  a  most  important  belief — important 
if  it  be  true,  and  equally  important  if  it  be 
false.  For  the  decline  of  a  people,  like  the 
senility  of  a  man,  absolves  it  from  the  obliga- 
tion to  be  strong  and  prosperous.  If  bad  gov- 
ernment, pauperism,  prostitution,  evil  man- 

377 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

ners  and  morals,  poverty,  plutocracy,  oppres- 
sion and  industrial  slavery  come  with  the  old 
age  of  a  nation,  just  as  baldness,  weak  knees, 
bad  teeth,  asthma,  defective  vision,  palsy  and 
accumulated  capital  come  with  the  old  age  of 
a  man,  then  what  is  the  use  of  resisting  these 
things? 

Enormous  inequalities  in  the  distribution  of 
wealth  and  power  have  arisen  in  the  United 
States  in  a  century.  I  believe  that  we  should 
not  have  been  so  submissive  to  those  things, 
had  it  not  been  for  the  deep-seated  belief  that 
they  come  "as  the  country  gets  older"  as  a 
matter  of  course.  To  be  sure,  our  whole 
theory  of  government  as  accepted  by  the 
masses  was  opposed  to  the  idea  of  plutoc- 
racy on  the  one  hand  and  industrial  slavery 
on  the  other;  but  a  governmental  theory  is 
no  match  for  an  ancient  notion,  so  deep- 
seated  that  it  almost  loses  the  character  of 
belief,  and  approaches  instinct  in  its  nature 
—and  so,  we  have  gradually  been  abandoning 
our  governmental  theory  of  democracy  as  a 
recipe  for  universal  prosperity.  It  is  only 

378 


SOCIAL  OLD  AGE  AND  DEATH 

with  the  rise  of  the  spirit  of  "insurgency"  in 
the  last  few  years  that  the  onward  march  of 
submission  to  privilege  has  been  checked  and 
turned  back  by  the  old  ideas  embodied  in  the 
Declaration  of  Independence.  Again  the  faith 
in  equality  is  spreading  and  strengthening— 
not  in  America  only,  but  all  over  the  world. 
Is  it  a  rising  tide  which  will  ebb  as  the  moon 
goes  down,  or  one  "which  yearly  gains  upon 
the  shore",  and  merely  has  "ebb  and  flow  con- 
ditioning its  march"? 

If  nations  are  born  but  to  die,  then  it  will 
ebb,  and  ebb,  and  finally  go  out  in  the  dead 
neap  tide  of  decay. 

We  are  a  young  nation,  but  are  we  really  a 
younger  people  than  the  Japanese?  Not  at  all. 
When  the  forefathers  of  the  Japanese  were 
savages,  so  were  ours.  They  made  a  half- 
emergence  from  barbarism  while  we  still 
roamed  woods  with  bulls'  horns  on  our  heads, 
and  won  manhood  by  killing  in  battle.  But 
they  halted  while  we  went  on;  and  when 
Perry  broke  the  seals  of  the  Island  Empire, 
we  had  already  passed  them  in  most  of  the 

379 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

qualities  which  make  up  real  civilization. 
Once  "older"  than  we,  they  had  become 
"younger".  As  a  matter  of  real  truth,  so  far 
as  we  know,  all  men  are  of  equal  racial  age 
— that  is  while  we  are  not  bound  to  accept 
the  theory  of  any  account  of  the  creation  in 
literal  form,  perhaps,  we  have  no  reason  to 
believe  that  one  people  has  any  more  advan- 
tage or  disadvantage  over  another  in  years 
than  if  we  are  actually  descended  from  Adam. 
No  matter  where  we  live  or  how,  as  a  matter 
of  hereditary  descent  one  human  being  has  as 
long  a  pedigree  as  another. 

We  are  the  cells  that  make  up  the  body  of 
the  social  organism.  We  are  as  short-lived 
and  as  long-lived  in  the  "young"  nation  as  in 
the  "old"  one.  Human  beings  are  alike  in  all 
phases  of  human  history — or  if  different,  the 
differences  are  too  slight  for  the  historian's 
measuring  instruments.  When  the  Roman 
Empire  staggered  down  to  its  fall  like  a  great, 
magnificent,  dying  beast,  it  was  composed  of 
the  same  sort  of  men  who  lived  under  Numa 
Pompilius.  No  change  takes  place  in  the  in- 

380 


SOCIAL  OLD  AGE  AND  DEATH 

dividuals  composing  a  society  which  prevents 
the  organization  from  achieving  a  life  as  long 
as  the  endurance  of  the  earth  itself. 

There  is  no  analogy  in  nature,  either,  which 
would  lead  us  to  expect  a  beginning,  a  cul- 
mination and  an  end  of  a  people.  The  bird 
societies  of  the  islands  of  the  sea  last  forever. 
The  community  of  muskrats  in  a  Minnesota 
swamp  has  lived  just  as  it  lives  now  since  be- 
fore the  building  of  the  pyramids.  The  prai- 
rie-dog town  which  persists  in  spite  of  gun, 
trap  and  poison  on  the  arid  plains  of  the 
United  States  was  a  flourishing  community 
when  Columbus  landed  at  Cat  Island.  If  the 
earth  continues  to  yield  its  food,  the  animal 
community,  while  its  individual  membership 
changes  constantly  by  births  and  deaths,  lives 
like  the  cataract,  which,  changing  momently, 
is  always  the  same. 

Indeed,  the  human  society  in  its  simpler 
and  more  animal  forms  is  almost  as  stable 
as  the  empires  of  animals.  There  is  no  in- 
fancy, growth,  maturity  and  decline  of  the 
savage  tribe.  It  goes  on  and  on  like  a  wolf 

381 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

pack  or  hive  of  bees.  It  is  only  the  civilized 
society  which  waxes,  wanes  and  dies. 

Doctor  Alexis  Carrel  has  learned  how  to 
keep  alive  the  cells  of  which  our  bodies  are 
composed,  outside  the  body.  Bits  of  lung, 
liver,  kidney  or  muscle,  live  and  grow  under 
his  microscope.  But  not  forever — for  the  cells 
rid  themselves  of  substances  which  finally 
poison  them  and  bring  their  lives  to  an  end. 
It  is  the  old  biological  story — no  living  thing 
can  exist  in  the  waste  products  of  its  own 
body. 

So  it  is  with  nations,  empires  and  communi- 
ties— in  some  way,  under  civilized  conditions, 
they  secrete  toxins  which  destroy  the  organ- 
ism. These  poisons  are  slavery,  plutocracy, 
monopoly,  inequality,  exploitation,  poverty, 
luxury,  discontent,  degeneration  and  finally 
national  death.  Doctor  Carrel  takes  the  grow- 
ing tissue  from  under  his  microscope's  cover- 
glass  and  cleanses  it  of  its  poisoned  surround- 
ings. Then  he  gives  it  new  "tissue  juice"  in 
which  to  grow — and  it  becomes  "young" 
again — it  grows  faster  than  ever. 

382 


SOCIAL  OLD  AGE  AND  DEATH 

The  problem  which  civilization  has  never 
solved  is  that  of  cleansing  our  body  politic  of 
its  toxins,  and  thus  keeping  it  forever  young. 
That  it  can  be  done  there  is  no  reason  to  doubt. 
Civilization  is  natural  or  it  would  not  be  for- 
ever repeating  itself  in  human  history.  We 
have  not  found  the  way  to  make  it  perpetual, 
that  is  all.  The  empire,  according  to  universal 
laws  of  evolution,  is  beset  by  greater  dangers 
than  is  the  tribe — being  more  complex  it  tends 
more  strongly  to  disintegrate.  But,  as  man  is 
imperiously  bidden  by  instinct  to  form  na- 
tions and  states,  he  must,  by  the  exercise  of 
his  reason,  find  out  the  way  to  build  them  on 
bases  of  everlasting  prosperity. 

The  evils  which  wreck  civilization  are 
pretty  well  understood  now.  They  lie  mainly 
in  the  tendencies  of  men  in  communities  to 
gain  advantages  over  one  another,  and  to  use 
them  to  ends  of  oppression  and  exploitation. 
Society  splits  into  two  antagonistic  wings- 
one  composed  of  rich  and  powerful  degen- 
erates, the  other  of  poor  and  destitute  degen- 
erates. 

383 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

A  new  era  has  dawned.  We  have  still  these 
two  degenerate  wings,  but  we  have  an  immense 
middle  class,  and  permeating  all  classes,  we 
have  a  new  science,  a  new  love  of  truth,  a  new 
altruism,  a  new  social  conscience  and  a  fund 
of  arranged  knowledge  greater  than  that  pos- 
sessed by  all  other  ages  combined.  We  shall 
find  the  right  way  of  collective  life,  this  time, 
and  a  blessed  immunity  from  the  death  that 
overtook  the  civilizations  of  the  past. 


CHAPTER  XXXIV 

THE  GREAT  MIGRATION 

NOTHING  is  more  peaceful  than  the 
status  of  the  passengers  on  a  great  liner 
after  all  the  space  has  been  assigned  to  those 
having  the  right  to  it,  all  conflicting  claims  ad- 
justed, and  the  floating  community  has  settled 
down  into  stable  conditions  of  the  voyage.  The 
little  planet  goes  smoothly  on  bearing  its  load 
of  humanity  and  comes  prosperously  to  its 
slip  in  the  harbor,  with  not  a  breach  of  the 
peace,  nor  a  jar  in  the  personal  relations  of 
the  thousands  aboard. 

Up  to  this  time  in  the  world's  history,  the 
human  race,  as  passengers  on  the  good  ship 
Earthy  have  been  working  out  in  blood  and 
flame  and  tears  the  questions  of  the  allotment 
of  space.  The  mystery  of  creation  seems  dark- 
est in  the  fact  that  there  was  no  booking  office 
through  which  the  matter  of  accommodations 

385 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

could  be  amicably  settled.  We  came  aboard 
by  the  fiat  of  development,  only  half  human, 
altogether  ignorant,  knowing  naught  of  the 
shape  or  extent  of  the  huge  boat  on  which  we 
sailed;  and  ever  since  this  emergence  into 
manhood  we  have  been  stampeding  back  and 
forth,  slaying,  burning,  trampling  precious 
things  into  the  decks  in  migrations  to  new 
and  better  lands,  and  flights  to  new  and 
worse  ones.  Tartar  and  Mongol,  Hun  and 
Vandal,  Goth  and  Saracen,  Angles,  North- 
men, Normans,  Danes,  Persians,  Romans— 
a  hundred  names  of  dread  and  terror  and 
romance  and  high  emprise  might  be  men- 
tioned, which  have  sounded  over  the  earth 
during  the  ages  which  have  elapsed  from  the 
time  when  the  Children  of  Israel  spied  out 
the  land  of  Canaan,  found  it  good  and  took 
it  in  God-bidden  carnage,  down  to  the  times 
when  Cortez  and  Pizarro  did  impossible 
things  in  Mexico  and  Peru;  and  on  to  to-day's 
onslaught  of  the  Balkan  States  on  Turkey  in 
an  incredibly  brilliant  effort  to  drive  from 
the  soil  on  which  they  believe  themselves  to 

386 


THE  GREAT  MIGRATION 

have  a  just  claim  the  unspeakable  Turk  who 
has  harried  and  murdered  and  corrupted  them 
for  five  hundred  years.  All  these  things  are 
the  little  bustlings  of  the  passengers  on  the 
good  ship  Earth  in  efforts  to  find  their  state- 
rooms, their  berths  and  their  nooks  in  the 
steerage. 

These  disturbances  are  not  over.  We  are 
not  half  through,  perhaps.  We  must  decide 
all  the  problems  which  have  been  so  hurriedly 
sketched  in  these  chapters  and  many  more. 
The  issues  of  the  Seven  Perils  of  Humanity 
must  be  solved,  by  peace  or  war — and  no  one 
can  tell  how  much  of  the  one  will  suffice  or  of 
the  other  be  required.  But  it  seems  certain 
that  it  will  not  be  all  peace. 

But  the  hustle,  the  bustle  and  the  quarrel- 
ing are  quieting  down.  We  are  getting  or- 
ganized. We  know  the  ship  better,  now — 
in  fact  we  have  a  diagram  of  the  accommoda- 
tions, and  some  facts  as  to  the  passenger  list. 
There  is  abroad  the  spirit  of  citizenship  of 
the  world  as  against  the  narrow  membership 
in  the  tribe,  the  city,  the  state,  the  kingdom, 

387 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

or  the  empire.  We  have  passed  in  large 
measure  from  the  family  as  the  largest  unit  of 
society,  through  the  tribal  state,  and  on  by  all 
intermediate  stages  into  the  "trust"  phase  of 
government — and  the  names  of  the  govern- 
ment trusts  are  the  British  Empire,  the  United 
States  of  America,  Russia,  Austria-Hungary, 
Germany,  France  and  the  like.  There  seems 
to  be  good  reason  to  believe  that  we  shall  at 
some  time  attain  the  status  of  the  universal 
trust  in  government — the  parliament  of  man, 
the  federation  of  the  world — which  may  or 
may  not  be  well  for  us. 

Such  a  federation  will  be  charged  with  the 
business  of  assigning  space,  conserving  re- 
sources, eliminating  world  dangers,  and  put- 
ting an  end  to  those  awful  tumults  and  op- 
pressions which  have  marked  the  settlement 
of  claims  to  space  heretofore. 

Will  there  ever  be  a  real  rest?  Will  the  na- 
tions ever  be  able  to  accept  their  quarters  as 
things  settled  "for  all  time"? 

The  conditions  can  never  be  permanently 
settled,  because  the  earth  itself  is,  and  always 

388 


THE  GREAT  MIGRATION 

must  be,  in  a  state  of  change.  These  changes 
will  in  the  future  force  upon  the  human  race 
the  greatest  migrations  in  its  history. 

There  is  good  reason  to  expect  that  within  a 
thousand  years  the  climate  of  the  whole  world 
will  be  enormously  warmed  by  the  alteration 
in  the  air  which  we  are  bringing  about  every 
day  by  the  burning  of  coal.  There  is  some 
reason  to  believe  that  this  change  has  already 
become  perceptible.  MacDowell,  a  British 
investigator,  has  determined  that  the  last  fifty 
winters  have  brought  fewer  frost  days  in  Eng- 
land than  any  other  fifty-year  period  since 
1841 — and  the  discharge  of  carbonic  acid  gas 
into  the  air  from  our  furnaces  which  is  bring- 
ing this  change  about  has  scarcely  begun. 
The  first  great  migration,  therefore,  will  be 
into  the  now  frozen  north — Siberia,  Finland, 
Lapland,  Canada  and  Alaska.  These  will  be- 
come great  agricultural  regions — if  the  ex- 
pected change  comes. 

But  this  will  be  but  an  eddy  in  the  stream  of 
change,  and  will  run  against  the  secular 
change  by  which  the  world  is  cooling  off  and 

389 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

drying  up.  Sometime  the  warming  process 
will  stop.  The  cooling  process  which  has 
been  going  on  with  certain  alterations  and  dis- 
turbances since  the  earth  was  a  molten  mass — 
and  long  before — will  reassert  itself.  Thou- 
sands of  years  hence,  the  frozen  area  about 
the  poles  will  again  begin  to  broaden.  The 
timber  line  will  begin  to  creep  down  the 
mountainsides.  The  great  migration  will 
'bout-face  and  turn  again  from  the  poles  to- 
ward the  equator.  The  nations  of  the  earth 
will  perforce  move  southward  from  the  north, 
and  northward  from  the  south,  until  at  last, 
the  peoples  of  the  world  will  make  their  last 
stand  against  advancing  cold  and  drought  in 
a  narrowing  zone  which  will  include  Central 
Africa,  Southern  Asia,  Northern  Australasia 
and  the  South  Sea  Islands ;  and  the  great  rich 
Amazon,  Arinoco  and  La  Plata  Valleys  in 
South  America — together  with  the  West  In- 
dia Islands. 

Along  with  this  secular  cooling  will  be  a 
secular  drying  up  of  the  earth  by  the  fixing 
of  water  in  chemical  combinations,  and  its  ab- 

390 


THE  GREAT  MIGRATION 

sorption  into  the  body  of  the  globe.  The 
deserts  which  will  then  overspread  the  re- 
gions now  occupied  by  the  United  States,  and 
Europe  will  be  not  only  cold,  but  dry.  The 
men  of  that  day  will  again  find  themselves  in 
a  world  over  vast  areas  of  which  no  explorer 
will  be  able  to  force  his  way;  and  poetry  and 
literature  will  again  be  filled  with  the  mys- 
tery of  the  unknown,  as  it  was  when  Othello 
told  Desdemona's  father  of  the  Hyperboreans 
and  men  whose  heads  grow  beneath  their 
shoulders. 

These  migrations  are  sure  to  come.  They 
will  be  very  slow — so  slow  that  the  movement 
will  be  imperceptible.  And  they  will  prob- 
ably take  place  through  ages  of  world  regula- 
tion which  will  eliminate  war,  and  of  a  de- 
creasing birth-rate  which  will  make  poverty 
unknown,  until  the  last  men  vanish  in  a  sur- 
viving few  pinched  between  the  two  advancing 
frontiers  of  the  frost — men  who  will  be  great 
and  wise  enough  to  triumph  over  their  fates, 
even  while  yielding  to  them. 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

"Extremes  meet!" 

In  this  old  saying  lies  one  of  the  deep- 
est of  truths.  There  is  a  degree  of  "down" 
which  becomes  "up."  Farthest  east  is  the 
same  thing  as  nearest  west.  Frost  burns  the 
flesh  like  fire.  Great  riches  develop  into  a  spe- 
cies of  poverty.  Learning,  after  long,  long 
climbings,  reaches  the  highest  attainments  and 
steps  out  on  the  same  plane  of  humility  with 
ignorance. 

Emerson  confesses  to  the  fact  that  for  years 
he  brooded  over  the  idea  of  his  essay  on  Com- 
position, and  longed  to  write  it.  I  wish  an 
Emerson  would  master  the  deeper  meanings 
of  the  expression  "Extremes  meet",  and  give 
us  an  Emersonian  treatment  of  it. 

I  am  now  seeking  the  secret  of  a  perfect  or- 
ganization of  the  relations  of  the  passengers 
on  the  good  ship  Earth — in  other  words,  I 
am  feebly  questioning  the  heart  of  things  as 
to  the  possibility  of  a  millennium — not  a  mil- 
lennium in  which  the  lion  and  the  lamb  shall 
lie  down  together,  save  in  metaphor,  but  mere- 
ly a  reign  of  justice  and  love  in  which  there 

392 


THE  GREAT  MIGRATION 

shall  be  no  want,  and  no  greed,  no  plutocracy, 
no  labor  question  and  no  idleness. 

The  millennial  principle  is  found  in  the  per- 
fection of  human  selfishness.  The  universal 
law  of  human  conduct  is  that  all  human  be- 
ings seek  to  satisfy  their  desires  along  the  lines 
of  least  resistance.  In  other  words,  every  per- 
son tries  to  get  what  he  wants  in  the  easiest 
possible  way.  This  was  true  when  the  wisest 
man  was  the  one  who  knocked  fruit  from  the 
tree  with  a  club  rather  than  to  climb  for  it  or 
wait  for  it  to  fall,  or  speared  fish  with  a  sharp 
stick,  rather  than  to  seize  them  with  his  hands. 
These  sought  to  satisfy  their  desires  in  the 
easiest  possible  way.  It  is  equally  true  of  the 
missionary  who  dares  disease  and  death  for 
the  heathen,  or  the  millionaire  who  builds  li- 
braries, or  that  other  one  who  donates  his 
wealth  to  the  spread  of  single-tax.  It  is  equally 
true  of  the  mother  who  drudges  that  her 
daughter  may  have  lessons  in  piano  or  singing. 
It  is  true  of  the  friend  who  takes  obloquy  and 
assumes  undeserved  guilt  to  shield  his  friend. 
It  was  true  of  Bishop  Myriel-Bienvenu  when 

393 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

he  gave  the  candlesticks  to  Jean  Valjean.  It 
was  true  of  Jean  Valjean  when  he  ceased  to 
be  a  beast  of  prey,  and  because  he  had  been 
so  much  lower  than  the  bishop,  had  to  rise 
so  much  higher.  Each  sought  to  satisfy  his 
desires  in  the  easiest  possible  way.  Each  man 
who  does  an  act  of  unselfishness  chooses  it  be- 
cause he  could  not  otherwise — or  so  it  seems 
to  him — find  so  close  an  approach  to  happi- 
ness. 

The  whole  matter  of  popularization  of  jus- 
tice lies  not  in  a  less  avid  struggle  of  men  to 
attain  their  desires  but  in  the  changing  char- 
acter of  those  desires.  When  Jean  Valjean 
set  his  foot  on  the  little  boy's  coin,  after  having 
been  given  life  and  freedom  by  the  bishop,  he 
wanted  that  money;  but  when  he  felt  the  tor- 
ture of  the  memory  of  what  had  been  done 
to  him  and  what  he  had  done  to  others,  and 
went  running  up  and  down  the  highways  seek- 
ing the  little  boy  that  he  might  restore  the 
thing  stolen,  calling,  "Petit  Gervais!  Petit 
Gervais!  Petit  Gervais!"  and  finally  breaking 
down  in  the  awful  cry,  "What  a  wretch  I  am!" 

394 


THE  GREAT  MIGRATION 

he  wanted  something  else  than  money — some- 
thing quite  as  necessary  to  human  happiness 
as  any  material  satisfaction.  In  both  cases  he 
sought  to  satisfy  his  desires  in  the  easiest  way 
open  to  him. 

Unselfishness  in  the  ordinary  sense  of  the 
term,  is  as  common  as  selfishness.  Altruism 
is  a  quality  of  beasts  as  well  as  of  men.  The 
wolf  who  devours  even  his  wounded  fellow 
must  practise  a  wolfish  altruism  when  he 
hunts  in  the  pack,  and  drags  down  the  deer — 
he  must  not  eat  individually  what  has  been 
hunted  collectively.  The  cock  calls  his  hens  to 
the  food  he  has  scratched  out,  and  does  not  eat 
until  they  come.  The  partridge  flutters  on 
pretending  to  be  wounded,  daring  danger  to 
save  her  chicks.  And  when  one  comes  to  the 
socialized  animals,  he  discovers  that  the  ruling 
passion  of  the  individual  is  the  service  of 
others.  If  the  word  happiness  may  be  prop- 
erly applied  to  these  little  brothers  and  sis- 
ters of  ours,  who  shall  say  that  the  highest 
happiness  of  the  ant  is  hot  found  in  the  public 
service?  If  so,  the  ant  would  be  miserably 

395 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

unhappy  if  it  served  itself  first.  It  also  seeks 
to  satisfy  its  desires  in  the  easiest  way  open 
to  it. 

Human  unselfishness  rose  to  a  higher  plane 
and  took  on  a  steadier  character  than  it  seems 
to  reach  in  the  animal  world,  because  of  the 
long  infancy  of  the  young  human  being.  Par- 
enthood made  altruism  a  habit  with  men, 
while  it  remained  only  an  occasional  passion 
with  most  animals.  Thus  the  family  was 
founded,  and  out  of  the  family  grew  the  tribe. 
The  helpless  baby  has  been  the  great  civilizer 
of  the  world.  It  extended  the  passion  for  serv- 
ice beyond  the  limits  of  sex  devotion.  It  made 
brotherhood  and  sisterhood  a  fixed  relation. 
It  opened  to  the  human  soul  the  unimaginable 
possibilities  for  happiness  found  in  the  service 
of  others.  Still  men  sought  always  to  satisfy 
their  wants  in  the  easiest  possible  way — but  as 
altruism  developed,  a  new  sort  of  want  arose 
— nothing  less  than  the  desire  for  the  welfare 
of  others. 

Unselfishness,  therefore,  is  nothing  but  the 
satisfaction  of  a  higher  sort  of  selfishness.  The 

396 


THE  GREAT  MIGRATION 

instinct  for  it  is  deeply  rooted  and  fully  de- 
veloped in  all  men.  No  long  period  of  race- 
development  is  necessary  for  its  flowering  as 
the  ruling  passion  of  the  race.  Tyrants,  crim- 
inals, monopolists,  aristocrats  and  all  who  live 
on  the  labor  of  others  appeal  to  the  general 
good  as  their  own  reason  for  existence ;  and  in 
doing  so,  they  not  only  address  themselves  to 
a  universal  instinct,  but  they  account  for  them- 
selves to  themselves  in  the  only  way  that  makes 
life  tolerable  to  the  normal  mind. 

There  are  many  who  take  as  their  guiding 
political  philosophy  the  creed  that  every  man 
will  serve  his  own  interest  when  he  knows 
what  it  is.  They  are  right — he  will;  but  his 
own  interest  lies  in  being  happy.  And  his 
happiness  is  every  day  less  and  less  capable  of 
being  satisfied  with  his  personal  prosperity,  or 
the  welfare  of  his  family,  or  of  the  achieve- 
ment of  justice  for  his  class.  Class-conscious- 
ness is  a  good  thing;  for  it  spreads  over  a 
wider  field  than  did  self-consciousness,  or  sex- 
consciousness,  or  family-consciousness,  or 
tribe-consciousness,  or  nation-consciousness,  of 

397 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

empire-consciousness.  But  it  is  still  too  nar- 
row to  satisfy  the  human  soul ;  and  it  does  not 
satisfy  even  those  who  preach  it.  Most  of 
them  in  preaching  class-consciousness  to  the 
working  people,  step  over  the  lines  of  their 
own  class  that  they  may  find  greater  happiness 
in  serving  the  largest  class. 

Selfishness  is  the  universal  rule  of  human 
conduct;  and  it  attains  its  perfection  in  that 
wonderful  flowering-out  which  denies  happi- 
ness to  enlightened  man  save  in  the  happiness 
of  all  men.  The  type  of  narrow  selfishness  i9 
found  in  the  Hindu  rajah  who  rides  on  his 
elephant  "mad  with  pride"  through  streets 
filled  with  famishing  people,  and  does  not 
care.  He  keeps  his  wealth  for  himself,  and 
carries  "collops  of  fat  upon  his  flanks"  while 
their  bones  prick  through  the  flesh.  The 
higher  type  is  the  man  who  would  feel  such 
torture  in  the  sufferings  of  others  that  he 
would  die  if  he  did  not  "sell  all  he  had  and 
give  to  the  poor".  Our  millionaires  are  now 
writhing  in  agony — many  of  them — at  the 
poverty  which  they  see,  and  which  many  of 

398 


THE  GREAT  MIGRATION 

them  are  beginning  to  admit,  they  cause.  They 
begin  to  desire  deliverance  from  the  body  of 
this  death.  The  highest  selfishness  impels 
them  to  work  for,  or  at  least  plan  for,  social 
justice.  They  are  beginning  to  see  the  pro- 
found wisdom  in  that  other  old  saying,  "Right 
wrongs  no  man."  They  are  beginning  to  see 
that  when  Jesus  went  to  the  cross  He  did  the 
only  thing  possible  from  the  standpoint  of 
even  the  highest  selfishness — as  any  one  may 
see  if  he  will  try  to  imagine  the  Nazarene's 
acceptance  of  life  at  the  sacrifice  of  his  mes- 
sage to  the  world. 

Society  moves  irresistibly  on  to  its  own  per- 
fection through  selfishness  raised  to  the  plane 
of  altruism.  Through  a  perfected  society,  we 
shall  achieve  eternal  social  life.  Out  of  the 
mud  of  selfishness  grows  through  perfectly 
natural  causes  the  redemptive  lily  of  altruism. 


CHAPTER  XXXV 

THE  SOCIAL  CRYSTAL 

WHEN  the  net  result  and  ultimate 
meaning  of  the  social  unrest  of  these 
modern  times  is  discovered  and  laid  bare  by 
posterity,  it  will  be  identified  in  some  new 
height  climbed  and  held  by  the  human  mind. 
Our  fixed  and  dominant  idea  is  progress:  but 
it  is  well  to  ask,  progress  toward  what?  We 
are  reluctant  to  believe  that  the  conscious  aims 
which  now  seem  to  direct  human  affairs  will 
be  found  to  be  those  leading  to  our  real 
achievement.  This  is  an  age  of  hammers  and 
anvils,  of  molten,  rolled,  spun  and  cast  metals, 
of  grinding  and  mixing,  of  chaotic  building 
and  tearing  down,  of  enormous  battling  forces. 
Our  material  progress  seems  like  the  rearing 
of  a  Babel  tower,  ambitious  to  reach  the  heav- 
ens, but  going  awry  in  multitudinous  frustra- 
tions and  futilities  because  of  a  confusion  of 

400 


THE  SOCIAL  CRYSTAL 

tongues  in  our  ideals  and  purposes.  This 
must  be  because  we  see  only  the  scaffolding, 
hear  little  but  the  noise  and  uproar  of  en- 
deavor. The  future  will  see  the  temple — 
some  fair  new  fane  of  the  spirit,  some  simple 
Parthenon  in  which  a  larger  philosophy  shall 
dwell. 

Already  the  lines  of  thought  seem  converg- 
ing toward  a  new  focus.  Listen  to  the  parley 
of  the  systems  of  thought,  as  they  clear  the 
docket  of  reason's  chancery  of  the  old  causes 
of  bickering. 

"God  is  omnipresent,"  says  the  theologian. 

"The  universe  is  God,"  says  the  pantheist. 

"He  is  a  spirit,"  replies  the  theologian. 

"There  is  nothing,"  interposes  the  material- 
ist, "but  force  and  matter." 

"What  is  spirit,"  asks  the  transcendentalist, 
"but  pure  free  activity;  force;  energy  di- 
vorced from  its  carnal  bondage  to  matter; 
'thought  thinking  itself?" 

"God  is  the  one  being  infinite  and  eternal," 
rejoins  the  theologian,  as  if  to  close  the  case. 

"Not   so,"    responds    the    physicist,    "both 
401 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

atoms  and  force  are  indestructible  and  eternal, 
and  pervade  the  universe." 

"Do  you  know  what  the  universe  is?"  asks 
the  astronomer.  "We  are  beginning  to  per- 
ceive a  little  of  its  harmonies.  It  spins  about 
us  in  a  great  whirl  and  vortex — not  a  formless 
chaos — of  worlds  and  suns,  separated  by  un- 
imaginable abysses,  but  bound  into  a  whole  by 
lines  of  force  acting  upon  matter.  So  much 
we  know." 

"And  this  immensity,"  says  the  physicist, 
looking  up  from  his  calculations,  "has  its 
micro-reflection  in  the  dust-grain  under  our 
feet.  If  a  drop  of  water  were  magnified  to  the 
size  of  the  earth,  its  atoms  would  be  dispersed 
through  its  space  as  bodies  larger  than  bird- 
shot,  perhaps,  but  smaller  than  tennis-balls. 
On  knowing  this,  we  at  once  conceive  of  the 
drop  as  a  universe,  with  stars  and  planets, 
orbits  and  periods  of  revolution.  And,  more- 
over, see  the  parallel  between  the  atom  and 
the  universe!  Atoms  themselves  seem  to  be 
nothing  but  inconceivably  complex  systems 
of  electrons,  each  of  which  is  made  up  of  an 

402 


THE  SOCIAL  CRYSTAL 

electric  charge  no  more  material  than  the  light 
or  heat  into  which  it  might  be  transformed. 
Thus  we  explain  the  solid  matter  of  the  globe 
itself,  by  explaining  it  away!" 

"I  said  in  Plato's  time,"  speaks  up  the  ideal- 
ist, "that  matter  is  non-existent;  that  there  is 
nothing  but  force.  Has  the  physicist,  of  all 
men,  come  to  agree  with  me?" 

"It  does  seem  true,"  admit  all  the  scientists, 
"that  heat,  light,  every  form  of  radiant  energy, 
gravitation,  chemism,  electricity,  magnetism, 
all  are  but  modes  of  motion,  and  the  universe 
itself  a  vast  congeries  of  motions,  and  nothing 
else,  acting  by  attractions,  repulsions  and 
stresses,  under  the  rule  of  law." 

"But,"  cries  the  searcher  after  truth,  "I  still 
find  the  old  mystery!  How  began  these  mo- 
tions? How  was  enacted  this  law?" 

"Both  law  and  motions,"  answers  science, 
"come  from  the  unknowable." 

"Canst  thou  by  searching,"  adds  religion, 
"find  out  God?" 

Both  have  come  to  the  same  point — the  one 
through  hunger  for  knowledge,  the  other 

4°3 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

through  thirst  after  righteousness;  and  both 
are  baffled  by  the  same  mystery. 

What  then,  it  is  asked,  have  all  these  clash- 
ing systems  gained  by  their  eonian  quest? 
Much,  indeed.  For  one  most  vital  thing,  they 
have  found  out  the  identity  of  the  object  all 
have  sought,  and  of  the  mystery  before  which 
all  have  bowed. 

They  know  how  causeless  were  all  their 
quarrels;  and  this,  we  may  believe,  is  to  be 
the  great  gift  of  these  times  of  ours  to  the  race 
— the  idea  of  universality  of  law  and  the  one- 
ness of  things.  All  things  will  have  been 
brought  within  the  sweep  of  the  law,  and  the 
law  of  nature  identified  with  the  law  of  God. 
So  man  will  have  but  one  duty:  to  discover 
the  application  of  this  law  to  any  given  case, 
and  apply  it.  All  codes  and  decalogues  will 
be  valid  only  as  declaratory  of  this  primal  and 
universal  law. 

A  farmer's  boy  once  stood  in  a  gentle  fall  of 
snow,  watching  the  descending  flakes  as  they 

404 


THE  SOCIAL  CRYSTAL 

turned  the  somber  fields  first  to  gray  and  then 
to  white,  and  transformed  trees  and  dwellings 
into  ghosts.  The  mystery  and  charm  of  the 
first  snow-fall  filled  his  being  with  unaccount- 
able happiness.  At  last  he  turned  his  eyes 
from  the  blurred  landscape,  and  fixed  them 
upon  the  white  flakes  resting  in  crystal  per- 
fection on  the  sleeve  of  his  rough  coat.  Sud- 
denly the  dreamy  eyes  brightened  into  the 
fixed  and  definite  stare  of  keen  observation. 
He  felt  as  does  the  explorer  of  some  lonely 
island,  when,  in  petroglyph,  or  in  charred  and 
etched  bone  or  shard,  or  in  half-obliterated 
track,  he  sees  the  evidence  of  human  occupa- 
tion. On  the  hairy  sleeve  lay  things  never  ob- 
served by  him  before,  things  of  symmetry  and 
order,  objects  which  seemed  to  bear  the  im- 
print of  design.  How  came  these  starry  and 
flower-like  forms  into  existence?  From  what 
academy  of  design  had  they  fallen,  so  softly 
fluttering  to  him  from  the  abysses  of  space? 
The  question  filled  and  engrossed  his  mind, 
and  lifted  him  to  that  plane  where  child  and 

405 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

philosopher  stand  upon  the  same  level  in  the 
contemplation  of  that  order  which  is  the  soul 
of  nature,  or  whose  other  name  is  law. 

The  snowflake  in  its  manifestation  of  the 
tendency  of  inorganic  matter  to  take  on  forms 
of  order  and  perfection — one  might  almost 
say,  to  take  on  organism — starts  a  train  of 
thought  which  leads  inward  to  the  atom,  and 
to  its  newly-discovered  unit  of  structure,  the 
electron  or  sub-atomic  corpuscle,  with  all  the 
pregnant  problems  of  their  natures,  and  out- 
ward to  the  vast  fields  of  life,  and  on  to  the 
circling  stars.  Inward  to  the  atom — itself  a 
galaxy,  a  stellar  universe  of  orbs  identical  in 
all  atoms:  outward  to  the  heavenly  galaxy 
itself  (perhaps  an  atom  in  some  higher  mat- 
ter)— from  the  unthinkably  small  to  the  un- 
imaginably great;  everywhere  we  find  the 
stresses  and  compulsions  of  law  ranging  all 
things  in  shapes  and  forms  of  beauty. 

Our  new  conception  of  the  atom  as  a  system 
or  plexus  of  systems  of  electric  charges,  and  of 
nothing  else,  and  of  matter  as  merely  a  mode  of 

406 


THE  SOCIAL  CRYSTAL 

motion,  is  not  a  figure  of  speech,  or  a  poetic 
trope,  but  a  cold  and  worked-out  mechanical 
conception.  This  explaining  away  of  matter, 
this  resolution  of  all  things  to  one,  comes,  not 
by  way  of  the  idealist  or  the  mystic,  but  by  the 
mechanician.  It  would  not  seem  a  strange 
thing  to  either  of  them,  perhaps,  could  it  be 
presented  to  a  Plato,  or  a  Berkeley;  but  to  the 
modern  scientific  mind,  and  to  our  unin- 
structed  senses,  it  seems,  at  first,  unthinkable. 
For  this  reason,  it  may  be,  this  most  revolu- 
tionary of  scientific  conceptions  has  not  as 
yet  touched  effectually  the  common  thought. 
Its  reactions  are  found,  not  in  the  whirl- 
wind of  trumpeted  discovery,  nor  in  the 
earthquake  of  controversy,  but  in  the  still 
small  voice  of  cloistered  research.  Yet  to 
this  conception  of  the  character  of  the  unit 
of  matter  will  run,  I  believe,  all  the  roads  of 
future  thought;  from  it  will  radiate  knowl- 
edge of  all  things  knowable ;  and  about  it  will 
form  the  simple  and  symmetrical  unity  of  an 
all-embracing  cosmic  philosophy.  Somewhere 
in  the  infinite  deeps  of  matter  is  the  indivisible 

407 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

something  which'  bridges  the  gap  between  the 
two  great  categories  of  matter  and  force.  In 
the  qualities  of  this  unit  will  be  found  the 
digits  in  which  the  quantities  of  things  uni- 
versal may  be  expressed.  In  units'  place,  we 
may  for  the  present  assume  the  electron ;  next 
the  atom;  then  the  molecule;  above  that  the 
crystal ;  and  somewhere  here  our  scale  begins 
to  branch.  Still  in  obedience  to  laws  op- 
erative upon  the  lowest  order,  the  line  of  the 
inorganic  runs  on  through  amorphous  frus- 
trations to  the  crystal,  to  those  great  masses 
which  we  know  as  the  satellite,  the  planet,  the 
sun,  and  finally  to  the  great  symmetrical  whole 
of  the  stellar  universe,  that  unutterable  circle 
which  comprises  all  of  which  we  know,  which 
sweeps  about  us  in  the  misty  remoteness  of 
the  milky  way,  and  which  in  all  human  lan- 
guage seems  least  remotely  hinted  at  in  that 
old  oath  "by  the  splendor  of  God!"  Here  our 
scale  ends,  for  very  lack  of  human  faculties 
for  comprehending  more,  just  as  it  terminated 
at  the  bottom  because  of  a  similar  want  of 
means  for  apprehending  less,  and  perhaps,  in 


THE  SOCIAL  CRYSTAL 

either  direction,  for  no  other  reason  whatso- 
ever. Grafted  upon  the  inorganic,  like  a 
branch  upon  a  tree,  runs  the  parallel  scale  of 
life — in  protoplasm,  in  cell,  in  individual.  The 
great  biological  trunk  divides  into  botany  and 
zoology,  and  the  latter  climbs  from  protozoon 
to  mollusk,  to  articulate,  to  vertebrate,  to 
mammal,  to  man — that  single  blossom  of  the 
tree  of  life,  the  birth  for  which  all  things  from 
the  beginning  have  been  in  labor,  the  crown 
and  glory  of  the  cosmic  plan. 

In  the  light  of  such  a  philosophy,  the  won- 
derful analogies  and  parallelisms  running 
through  the  whole  universe  may  turn  out  to 
be  more  than  accidental  resemblances;  and 
experiences  which  have  been  vouchsafed  to 
the  poet,  the  seer  or  the  prophet,  and  regarded 
by  the  scientist  as  without  the  pale  of  real 
knowledge  may  attain  recognition  as  glimpses 
of  rarely-seen  portions  of  the  seamless  web  of 
truth.  If  all  the  protean  forms  of  matter  are 
merely  variants  of  a  universal  form;  if  all 
forces  are  capable  of  identification  with  some 
universal  force;  if  matter  itself  is  but  a  form 

409 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

of  force;  if  all  motions  are  but  the  resultants 
of  attractions  and  repulsions  among  similar 
units;  if  all  states  of  being  are  mere  evi- 
dences of  equilibrium  of  stresses  running 
through  a  universal  medium;  then  we  may, 
and  it  seems  we  should,  expect,  with  increas- 
ing knowledge,  multiplying  evidences  of  this 
all-pervading  kinship  in  things  animate  and 
inanimate.  Spencer  says  that  evolution  is  the 
integration  of  matter  and  the  dissipation  of 
motion,  in  a  change  from  an  indefinite,  in- 
coherent homogeneity  to  a  definite,  coherent 
heterogeneity — and  the  world  smiles,  and 
mostly  fails  to  understand.  Emerson  says  in 
his  "Brahma": 

"If  the  red  slayer  think  he  slays, 

Or  if  the  slain  think  he  is  slain, 
They  know  not  well  the  subtle  ways 
I  keep,  and  pass,  and  turn  again." 

And  the  world  smiles  and  mostly  fails  to 
comprehend.  But  when  we  once  reach  the  cen- 
ter to  which  all  ways  converge,  so  that  we 
may  look  at  once  down  all  the  avenues  of 
thought,  we  may  see  that  the  words  of  the 

410 


THE  SOCIAL  CRYSTAL 

transcendentalist  are  at  least  as  exact  and  true 
as  those  of  the  synthetic  philosopher.  We 
may  be  able  to  see  that  the  atoms  in  the  crys- 
tals on  the  boy's  sleeve,  ranging  themselves  in 
lines  of  perfection,  are  acting  in  obedience  to 
the  same  laws  that  seek  to  express  themselves 
in  human  institutions,  just  as, 

"The  very  law  that  moulds  a  tear, 

And  bids  it  trickle  from  its  source, 
That  law  preserves  the  world  a  sphere, 
And  guides  the  planets  in  their  course." 

However  far  short  of  comprehension  of 
these  basic  relationships  we  may  fall,  how- 
ever lacking  may  be  pronounced  even  the  evi- 
dence of  their  existence,  there  seems  to  me  to 
be  deep  social  significance  in  the  fact  that  all 
through  the  universe  runs  the  law  that  beauty 
and  perfection,  which  are  other  names  for  or- 
der, are  found  in  the  forms  to  which  all  mat- 
ter and  force,  by  the  very  nature  of  things, 
strongly  tend.  We  see  this  so  plainly  in  the 
bodily  organs  and  constitution  of  animals  and 
plants  that  the  mention  of  it  is  a  truism.  It 
appears  still  more  beautifully,  if  possible,  in 

411 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

those  congeries  of  the  social  animals  in  which 
mutual  help  and  cooperation  have  been 
evolved  as  the  basic  rule  of  successful  collect- 
ive life.  And  when  we  descend  again  to  the 
snowflake  on  the  sleeve  we  find  the  same  law 
decreeing  order  and  beauty  in  the  relations  to 
one  another  of  atoms,  proof  of  the  very  exist- 
ence of  which,  while  revealed  to  the  intellect 
is  denied  as  evidence  to  the  senses.  How  then 
can  there  be  any  who,  while  admiring  the  pol- 
ity of  the  ant-heap  and  praising  the  economy 
of  the  bee-hive,  while  noting  with  pleasure 
the  fact  that  the  atoms  of  lead  and  carbon  and 
iron,  if  free  to  do  so,  will  unerringly  assume 
relations  with  one  another  full  of  order  and 
beauty,  yet  deny  that  there  can  be  any  natural 
condition  of  human  society  in  which  every 
member  would  be  in  right  relationship  to 
every  other  member,  and  to  the  whole,  and  in 
which  the  total  effect  might  be  a  state  of  jus- 
tice, of  happiness,  of  order  and  of  beauty? 

I  have  spoken  of  the  futilities  and  frustra- 
tions of  human  endeavor  and  of  collective  hu- 
man life,  and  of  the  conflicts  and  confusions 

412 


THE  SOCIAL  CRYSTAL 

which  mar  the  social  plan.  While  there  is 
authority  for  rating  man  a  little  lower  than 
the  angels,  there  is  woeful  reason  for  confess- 
ing that  whole  races  seem  but  little  higher 
than  the  brute.  In  such,  the  compulsion  of 
law  toward  more  perfect  order,  toward  the 
social  crystal,  is  felt,  but  it  is  weak,  and  its 
results  pitifully  imperfect.  True,  the  tribe  is 
formed — an  aggregation  of  social  atoms,  mu- 
tually aidful  on  certain  sordid  and  circum- 
scribed lines,  but  destructive  of  other  tribes, 
and  inwardly  full  of  "flint  and  flaw."  Other 
races  of  us  there  are  bound  by  tradition  and 
superstition,  prone  beneath  the 'rule  of  men 
like  themselves,  the  atoms  crowded  and  jum- 
bled together,  their  free  path  restricted,  the 
vibrations  of  individual  initiative  so  feeble 
that  we  despair  of  their  state  for  its  very  lack 
of  life. 

In  other  races,  like  our  own,  we  note  with 
hopefulness  the  vibrant  life  of  the  individ- 
ual, the  enormous  energy  of  the  mass.  The 
atom  has  a  greater  free-path  range,  and  one 
might  almost  expect  the  formation  of  the  so- 

413 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

cial  crystal.  But  we  see  at  work  also  the  same 
influences  which  mar  the  impulse  toward  per- 
fection in  the  lower  races.  Here,  too,  is  super- 
stition, and  the  despotic  rule  of  man  over  man. 
The  same  quality  which  made  tribe  destruc- 
tive of  tribe,  here  makes  the  great  nation  de- 
structive of  the  small,  and  fills  society  with  the 
anti-social  element  of  militarism.  In  order 
that  these  complex  units,  men  and  women,  may 
continue  to  exist,  they  must  separate  from  the 
rest  of  the  material  universe  those  things  which 
preserve  the  individual — food,  clothing  and 
shelter.  In  this  highest  society,  some  produce 
more  than  they  need  and  others  produce  noth- 
ing at  all.  Some  of  these  latter  are  idlers  be- 
cause they  are  denied  access  to  the  material 
universe  from  which  produce  comes,  and 
therefore  can  not  be  producers ;  others,  because 
by  certain  strange  conventions  they  are  given 
control  of  the  face  of  nature,  and  can  force 
their  fellows  to  produce  for  them.  These 
things  make  for  disorders,  imperfections  and 
frustrations,  and  the  social  crystal  fails  to 
form. 

414 


THE  SOCIAL  CRYSTAL 

Shall  we,  therefore,  despair  of  perfection 
coming  out  of  the  Nazareth  of  human  insti- 
tutions? By  all  means  no.  Here  is  a  green 
and  stagnant  pool,  its  waters  full  of  the 
poached  filth  of  the  herd  and  the  sty.  Yet,  we 
do  not  despair  of  the  water;  for  we  know  that 
under  right  conditions  its  molecules  will  yield 
to  law,  and  in  snow  or  frost  we  see  it  purified 
and  perfected.  Here  is  a  street  of  clay,  a  bed 
of  horrible  mire,  repulsive  to  the  eye  and 
treacherous  to  the  foot.  But  yonder  in  that 
piece  of  jewelry  is  the  same  clay  in  the  form 
in  which  emancipated  clay  chooses  to  exist, 
shining  in  all  the  hues  of  the  rainbow,  an  opal. 
In  the  soot  which  fills  the  air,  we  recognize 
some  kinship  with  the  snowflakes  with  which 
it  sometimes  mingles — only  the  soot  is  contam- 
inative,  smutchy,  befouling.  Yet,  but  give 
the  soot  opportunity,  too,  and  see  what  it  does : 
that  monarch  of  jewels,  the  diamond,  that  thing 
of  fire  and  radiance,  the  gem  for  which  wars 
have  been  fought  and  crowns  lost,  so  precious 
that  such  words  as  "Kohinoor"  and  "moon- 
stone" thrill  us  like  poems — the  diamond  is 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

only  soot  behaving  naturally.  The  slum  is  the 
rotting  pool  of  society*  the  sordid  life  of  farm 
and  shop  and  church,  its  bed  of  miry  clay»  the 
realm  of  counting-room  and  syndicate  and 
parliament  and  congress  its  contaminative 
soot,  but  unless  the  reign  of  law  and  order  and 
perfection  ceases  in  human  society,  we  should 
believe  in  its  capacity  to  purge  itself  of  evil 
and  realine  its  units  in  those  institutions  which 
shall  be  the  snowflakes,  the  opals,  the  diamonds 
of  racial  life. 

There  is  every  reason  to  believe  that  crystals 
are  formed  by  reason  of  very  simple  atomic 
facts.  Their  shapes  are  manifold  and  won- 
derful, but  it  seems  certain  that  lead  sulphide 
crystallizes  into  a  cube,  water  into  a  star  or 
cross,  and  other  substances  into  other  forms 
(which  may  almost  be  termed  designs)  be- 
cause of  inherent  necessities,  just  as  the  bee 
constructs  its  wonderful  hexagonal  cells  be- 
cause the  insect's  very  nature  and  form  for- 
bid its  making  any  other.  So  the  social  crys- 
tal must  grow  out  of  the  simplest  and  most  ob- 
vious relationships,  tendencies  and  needs  of 

416 


THE  SOCIAL  CRYSTAL 

life.  These  are  such  things  as  the  union  of 
men  and  women  in  race  preservation  and  in 
the  making  of  a  living — family  relations  and 
industrial  relations. 

It  must  be  when  carbon  undertakes  to  or- 
ganize itself  into  a  diamond  that  the  birth  of 
the  gem  takes  place  in  the  coming  together  of 
the  smallest  possible  number  of  free  atoms 
which  can  assume  harmonious  relations  with 
each  other.  Its  subsequent  history  is  but 
growth.  So  it  must  be  that  the  true  marriage 
of  a  free  man  and  a  free  woman  ought,  under 
proper  conditions,  to  have  a  similar  signifi- 
cance in  the  formation  of  social  groups.  Let 
all  human  relations  be  conceived  as  dissolved 
and  the  human  race  disseminated  through 
some  medium  in  which  it  could  exist  and 
freely  move  as  the  molecules  and  ions  of  a  salt 
float  in  a  solution,  and  the  tendency  toward 
organization  would  first  manifest  itself  in 
marriage  and  the  founding  of  families.  The 
first  family  may  not  be  a  crystal,  but  the  first 
social  crystal  seems  certain  to  be  a  family.  As 
families  are  ordinarily  formed,  by  chance- 

417 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

made  and  conventional  marriages,  there  is  no 
doubt  much  in  them  of  the  mud  and  soot  of 
imperfection;  but  so  much  of  the  crystalline 
as  society  displays  is  to  be  found  in  the  family 
group  or  traceable  to  its  influence. 

Second  only  to  this  in  determinative  force 
upon  social  groups,  and  perhaps  of  primary 
importance  after  the  first  stages  of  social  de- 
velopment, are  economic  and  industrial  fac- 
tors. The  first  necessity  of  man  is  to  make  a 
living.  In  the  beginning,  the  family  group  is 
also  an  economic  one;  but  when  tasks  of  mag- 
nitude are  undertaken,  when  commerce  and 
division  of  labor  arise,  and  especially  when 
the  machine  enters  into  the  problem  of  pro- 
duction as  an  important  factor,  the  family 
ceases  jto  dominate  the  industrial  field,  the 
union  of  people  in  industrial  groups  rises  to 
first  place. 

Is  the  gathering  together  of  human  atoms  in 
the  factories  and  shops  of  to-day  social  dia- 
monds or  social  soot?  One  answrer  only  can  be 
given  to  this  question.  The  social  crystal  is 
absent  from  our  industrial  life,  and  the  trod- 

418 


THE  SOCIAL  CRYSTAL 

den  clay  of  the  pit  of  the  labor  market,  foul 
with  tyranny,  oppression  and  vice  is  in  its 
place.  The  units  of  which  the  masses  are 
made  up  are  crowded  together  without  refer- 
ence to  their  inward  fitness  or  their  real  qual- 
ities of  manhood  or  womanhood.  Therefore 
there  is  no  harmony  or  order,  except  an  en- 
forced order  like  that  in  welded  iron.  The 
atoms  are  thrust  into  place  by  the  hammer  of 
necessity,  and  the  gracious  compulsion  of  in- 
ner tendencies,  or  spiritual  and  moral  forces 
has  small  opportunity  to  do  its  beneficent  work. 
The  atom  of  which  the  physicist  speaks 
must  be  regarded,  in  the  light  of  the  new 
knowledge,  as  very  complex,  and  made  up  of 
myriads  of  electrons ;  yet  in  its  outward  rela- 
tions it  seems  a  very  simple  thing,  so  much  so 
that  many  have  supposed  it  to  be  a  vortex  like 
the  ring  of  smoke  from  the  smoke-stack  of  an 
engine,  which,  we  know,  has  certain  attrac- 
tions toward,  and  repulsions  from,  other  like 
and  similar  rings,  and  which,  once  set  up  in  the 
frictionless  ether,  would  be  eternal  in  dura- 
tion. 

419 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

But  the  social  atom  is  that  most  complex  of 
all  known  things,  the  human  being.  The  at- 
tractions, repulsions  and  stresses  which  act  and 
react  among  the  units  of  society  are  so  mul- 
titudinous that  we  fail  to  understand  them, 
even  when  they  are  laid  before  us  in  all  the 
glare  of  the  light  of  the  most  recent  history— 
as  in  the  present  political  campaign  or  the  last 
war.  The  simplest  social  phenomenon  is  com- 
plex; and  as  society  moves  on  this  complexity 
increases;  for  in  human  progress  there  is  a 
change  to  a  state  in  which  each  social  unit  is 
more  varied  in  attributes  and  functions,  and 
in  which  there  are  more  sorts  of  units  than  in 
former  states — a  change  toward  a  definite,  co- 
herent heterogeneity.  It  is  not  to  be  presumed 
that  the  human  intellect  will  ever  be  able  to 
formulate  any  set  scheme  by  which  social 
groups  may  be  arranged,  without  violation  of 
that  complex  nature  which  is  beyond  compre- 
hension; yet  the  difference  between  man  and 
other  social  beings  is  found  in  his  intellect — 
bees  and  ants  and  marmots,  by  the  compulsion 
of  unreasoning  instinct,  live  collective  lives 

420 


THE  SOCIAL  CRYSTAL 

which  command  our  admiration;  but  human 
society  depends  for  its  success  or  failure  upon 
the  moral  and  intellectual  strength  and  prog- 
ress of  the  social  units.  Man  must  work  out 
his  own  salvation,  individual  and  collective, 
using  his  intellect  as  the  means  and  guide  in 
so  doing.  The  world  is  full  of  problems  for 
him — the  greatest  of  them  himself;  and  that 
branch  of  the  inquiry  which  has  for  its  object 
the  finding  of  the  right  way  of  collective  life 
has  been  the  one  from  which  he  has  ever  fallen 
back  most  baffled.  History  is  a  record  of  hu- 
man endeavor  like  that  which  the  sphygmo- 
graph  makes  of  the  pulse — the  picture  of  a 
weltering  rise  and  fall.  Out  of  the  unmapped 
gloom  comes  a  tribe  of  barbarians  strong  in 
individual  vigor  and  righteousness.  The 
tribe  becomes  a  nation.  Arts  and  sciences 
spring  up;  and  then  comes  decay  resulting 
from  failure  to  find  the  right  way  of  collec- 
tive life.  Babylon,  Assyria,  Medo-Persia, 
Egypt,  Greece,  Rome — they  all  went  the  same 
way;  and  along  the  same  worn  path  we  may 
hear  the  footsteps  of  the  Caucasian  civiliza- 

421 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

tion  of  Europe  and  America  of  to-day.  Man 
has  not  yet  learned  how  men  may  live  together 
on  terms  of  justice — the  terms  which  will  be 
found  in  accordance  with  nature  when  her 
full  law  is  read. 

Just  now  it  was  said  that  it  is  not  to  be  pre- 
sumed that  the  human  intellect  will  ever  be 
able  to  formulate  any  set  scheme  by  which 
social  groups  may  be  arranged  without  viola- 
tion of  that  complex  nature  which  is  beyond 
comprehension.  It  is  not  to  be  inferred  from 
this  that  the  case  is  to  be  regarded  as  hopeless, 
or  that  the  remedy  is  not  to  be  found  by  and 
through  man's  intellect.  It  must  be  true  that 
social  salvation  must  come  through  the  work- 
ing of  human  intelligence;  but  not  by  any 
such  "formulated  scheme".  Intellect  may  sup- 
ply conditions  for  a  rose  garden ;  but  the  rose 
must  bloom  by  the  action  of  forces  too  subtle 
for  the  mind.  In  all  man's  mastery  of  nature, 
he  studies  principles  and  supplies  conditions; 
but  into  the  arcana  of  nature,  he  can  not  pene- 
trate, and  in  her  labors,  her  hand  he  can  not 
force.  He  must  not  forget  that  he  himself  is 

422 


THE  SOCIAL  CRYSTAL 

but  a  bit  of  nature,  and  that  the  formation  of 
a  perfect  human  society,  like  the  making  of 
a  perfect  flower,  must  be  nature's  work,  not 
man's.  He  must  study  principles  and  supply 
conditions  in  the  one  case  as  in  the  other,  and 
faith  and  confidence  are  justified  that  when 
this  has  been  done,  universal  and  immutable 
law  will  do  the  rest. 

He  must  study  principles  and  supply  condi- 
tions in  the  human  garden  as  in  the  rose  gar- 
den; and  first  among  principles  he  must  know 
that  nature's  operations  must  be  along  her  own 
lines,  and  that  her  hand  must  not  be  forced. 
Once  there  was  a  man,  the  beating  of  whose 
heart  was  under  the  control  of  his  will ;  but  he 
controlled  it  to  his  own  undoing,  and  died. 
Man  is  not  wise  enough  to  direct  the  diges- 
tion of  his  own  food,  were  it  confided  to  his 
wisdom,  or  the  supply  of  air  to  his  lungs,  or 
to  manage  any  other  of  his  bodily  functions. 
Neither  is  society  wise  enough  to  direct  mil- 
lions of  things  relating  to  the  manner  of 
living  or  working  or  thinking  or  speaking 
of  its  members.  There  are  involuntary 

423 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

muscles,  and  nervous  reflexes,  and  mysteri- 
ous flows  of  force  to  which  the  vital  opera- 
tions of  the  body  politic  must  be  confided,  as 
well  as  similar  things  in  the  physical  body,  and 
for  the  same  reason — there  is  no  collective  in- 
telligence capable  of  controlling  or  even  com- 
prehending these  operations.  Therefore,  we 
see  all  civilizations  breaking  down  in  the  abuse 
of  the  collective  will,  exercised  in  the  direction 
of  the  taking  away  of  the  liberty  of  the  indi- 
vidual. The  crystal  on  the  boy's  sleeve  could 
form  only  by  the  free  action  of  free  molecules. 
The  diamond  was  formed  ages  ago  when  the 
conditions  were  such  as  to  set  the  carbon  atoms 
free;  deprived  of  liberty,  they  form  soot  or 
coal.  Sociologically,  we  are  nearing  to  or  de- 
parting from  conditions  making  possible  the 
formation  of  perfect  social  groups,  just  in  pro- 
portion as  we  approximate  to  the  state  when 
every  human  atom  shall  possess  perfect  lib- 
erty. 

And  what  is  liberty?  Here,  I  think,  we  need 
suffer  from  no  lack  of  knowledge ;  for  liberty 
has  ever  been  the  star  by  which  great  souls 

424 


THE  SOCIAL  CRYSTAL 

have  steered  their  courses,  and  to  its  compre- 
hension the  greatest  minds  have  striven. 

"Ye  shall  know  the  truth,"  said  Jesus,  "and 
the  truth  shall  make  you  free." 

"By  the  law  of  equal  freedom,"  says  Spen- 
cer, "every  man  has  the  right  to  do  whatever 
he  wills,  provided  that  he  does  not  thereby  in- 
fringe the  equal  liberty  of  another." 

"Do  not  unto  another,"  says  Confucius, 
"that  which  you  would  not  have  another  do  to 
you." 

"Whatsoever  ye  would  that  men  should  do 
to  you,"  says  Jesus,  "do  ye  even  so  to  them." 

All  these  utterances  are  different  statements 
of  the  same  truth,  the  essential  righteousness, 
beneficence,  naturalness  and  necessity  of  lib- 
erty. 

There  is  a  widespread  belief  or  notion  that 
liberty  was  enjoyed  by  primitive  man,  and  has 
been  lost.  This  is  an  error  founded  upon  an 
inadequate  conception  of  the  nature  of  liberty. 
Solitude  is  not  liberty:  it  is  deprivation.  The 
first  man,  if  such  a  creature  can  be  imagined, 
never,  therefore,  possessed  liberty.  Liberty 

425 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

connotes,  not  only  internal  relations,  but  ex- 
ternal ones.  Association  is  as  essential  to  hu- 
man liberty  as  individuation;  and  man  can 
never  enjoy  liberty  except  through  society. 
The  human  atom  has  right  relations — liberty 
— only  when  its  path  is  bounded  by  harmoni- 
ous influences  emanating  from  its  fellows. 
These  influences  being  natural — that  is,  just 
and  righteous— the  social  atoms  will,  under 
their  guidance,  of  their  own  accord  and  by 
virtue  of  their  natural  desires,  form  the  or- 
derly groups  which  will  tend  to  a  perfect 
society. 

Such  liberty  is  not  to  be  attained  in  the  ab- 
sence of  such  intellectual  development  as  to 
make  possible  the  placing  of  society  under  the 
control  of  factors  capable  of  recognizing  the 
need  and  essential  importance  of  it.  There  is 
good  reason  to  hope  that  the  races  most  highly 
developed  have  now  reached  this  stage.  Such 
being  the  case,  the  question  arises  as  to  whether 
any  part  of  the  race  has  yet  realized  such  lib- 
erty in  its  institutions.  This  question  must  be 
answered  in  the  negative.  The  most  that  can 

426 


THE  SOCIAL  CRYSTAL 

be  affirmed  is,  that  the  struggle  for  liberty  has 
begun,  and  that  an  adequate  conception  and 
definition  of  it  has  been  worked  out  and  is 
slowly  impressing  itself  upon  the  more  intel- 
lectual portions  of  the  more  intellectual  races. 
In  people  of  the  European  type,  religious  free- 
dom was  at  one  time  regarded  as  a  sufficient 
realization  of  liberty ;  but  when  and  where  that 
was  secured,  much  yet  remained  to  do.  Then 
civil  liberty  seemed  the  one  thing  needful ;  but 
in  many  countries  an  almost  perfect  condition 
of  civil  liberty  exists,  bringing  only  slight 
amelioration,  if  any.  Government  by  popular 
vote  is  essential  to  liberty;  but  in  nations  like 
ours  almost  half  the  adult  population,  and  in 
some  nearly  all  of  it,  have  their  rights  in  this 
regard,  and  still  the  right  condition  of  society 
as  to  social  adjustments  is  unattained.  Some 
further  step  is  demanded  for  the  conquest  of 
freedom. 

One  further  step  and  then  freedom!  Not 
alone  freedom  from  king,  from  inquisitor, 
from  suppression  of  thought,  from  civil  dis- 
franchisement;  but  freedom  from  the  burden 

427 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

of  labor  without  land,  of  travel  and  commerce 
without  highways,  from  the  hard  necessity  of 
asking  for  employment  of  other  men  or  going 
workless.  This  will  be  liberty  indeed,  liberty 
hitherto  unknown  in  civilization.  This  is  the 
one  step  further  which  democracy  must  take, 
the  impulse  and  power  to  take  which  is  the 
prize  of  this  last  great  battle  of  civilization, 
the  fight  which  all  past  civilizations  have  lost. 
To  him  who,  believing  in  liberty  as  society's 
only  salvation,  sees  with  what  meager  measure 
it  has  been  meted  to  man  by  even  the  best  of 
human  institutions,  the  thought  that  we  are  so 
near  to  the  crisis  of  this  struggle,  and  that  the 
day  is  so  full  of  promise,  comes  charged  with 
mystery,  with  sublimity — and  with  hope. 

Go  to  that  desert  which  has  been  an  arid 
waste  since  before  the  first  clod  of  the  Nile  Val- 
ley was  stirred  by  plow  or  shell  or  sharpened 
wood,  and  know  that  the  dust  simoom-driven 
over  its  immemorial  solitudes  once  was  man. 
Delve  below  Troy,  and  Ilion  under  Ilion  is 
found,  since  the  burying  of  which  a  hundred 
Homers  may  have  sung  and  been  forgotten. 

428 


THE  SOCIAL  CRYSTAL 

We  may  look  out  through  the  spaces  between 
the  constellations  and  find  velvet  deeps  be- 
yond in  which  no  star  appears;  for  we  peer 
out  past  the  bounds  of  the  stellar  universe  it- 
self. But  to  the  deeps  of  time  comprised  in 
our  racial  life  we  seem  to  find  no  limits.  Frag- 
ments of  forgotten  peoples  haunt  remote  re- 
gions; beneath  the  black  mold  of  newly-dis- 
covered tropical  forests  crumble  the  walls  of 
fabrics  builded  by  races  whom  the  ancient 
muse  of  history  never  dreamed.  Dimmer  and 
dimmer  grow  the  traces,  but  year  by  year  we 
find  instrumentalities  for  reading  them,  until 
those  civilizations  which  we  once  thought  old- 
est now  seem  young  compared  with  those 
whose  vanishing  shadows  throng  the  perspec- 
tive drawn  for  us  by  the  newer  knowledge, 
faint  ghosts  of  peoples  forgotten  before  the 
oldest  traditions  of  eld  were  known. 

The  centuries  lengthen  into  millenniums 
filled  with  racial  struggle  and  endeavor  and 
throe,  with  progress  and  achievement,  and 
with  universal  failure  at  last.  The  right  way 
of  collective  life  was  never  found,  and  still  re- 

429 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

mains  to  be  traced  out.  It  is  only  yesterday 
that  men  began  consciously  to  search  for  it  in 
their  Platos'  Republics,  their  Marxs'  Das 
Kapitah;  Their  Mores'  Utopias;  their  Bel- 
lamys' Looking  Backwards,  their  Georges' 
Progress  and  Poverties,  tentative  designs  of 
the  ultimate  social  order,  profiles  of  the  first 
surveys  of  the  right  way. 

The  fact  that  this  new  upward  step  in  prog- 
ress, to  which  our  efforts  to  democratize  our 
institutions  are  only  the  prelude  and  prepara- 
tion, is  a  step  so  transcendently  vital  in  5m- 
porance,  and  has  for  so  long  proven  beyond 
the  intellectual  reach  of  the  race,  invests  it 
with  mystery  and  awe  and  inspires  the  thought 
that  our  search  for  it  must  be  among  the  com- 
plexities and  subtleties  of  some  realm  of 
thought  now  beyond  our  ken.  It  is  thus  that 
the  helpless  conviction  comes  so  widely  to  pre- 
vail that  ages  of  race  development  must  pre- 
cede its  accomplishment.  The  hopeless  con- 
viction, I  say,  because  history  shows  that  prog- 
ress stops,  and  civilization  dies  of  failure  to 

430 


THE  SOCIAL  CRYSTAL 

find  this  way,  before  any  such  race  develop- 
ment can  take  place. 

How  much  higher  is  the  race  now,  in  the 
power  to  master  such  subtleties  and  complexi- 
ties, than  in  the  days  of  Job  or  Moses  or  Zo- 
roaster I  If  any  higher  at  all,  the  progress  is  so 
small  as  to  be  imperceptible.  The  only  thing 
to  be  said  in  favor  of  our  age  is,  perhaps,  that 
it  has  a  larger  proportion  of  persons  in  whom 
latent  power  is  developed;  and  that  we  have 
accumulated  a  great  fund  of  knowledge, 
handed  down  from  generation  to  generation, 
and  increasing  in  our  hands  by  the  compound 
interest  of  its  own  advantages,  but  the  posses- 
sion of  which  proves  nothing  as  to  inherent 
racial  capacity.  The  Greeks  of  Plato's  time 
were  entirely  capable  as  far  as  can  be  seen, 
of  comprehending  all  our  modern  knowledge, 
if  it  could  have  been  given  them  as  it  has  been 
given,  for  instance,  to  the  Japanese,  ready- 
prepared  and  predigested.  If  the  solving  of 
the  crucial  problem  of  progress  calls  for  a 
race  development  much  higher  than  that  of 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

the  civilizations  which  have  failed,  then  is  our 
condition  hopeless? 

Nothing  remains  to  be  tried  except  the  free- 
dom of  the  social  atoms  to  form  the  social  crys- 
tal, through  real  democracy.  We  have  reached 
this  knowledge  by  a  process  of  elimination 
which  has  strewn  the  road  of  history  with  dead 
civilizations.  The  fateful  forward  and  up- 
ward step  must  be  a  thing  so  simple  that  it  may 
be  taken  by  the  intelligent  decision  of  the  com- 
mon man  through  such  democratic  institutions 
as  he  now  has,  by  means  of  such  intellectual 
capacity  as  he  now  possesses,  and  such  racial 
instincts  and  spiritual  gifts  as  he  has  now  at- 
tained, aided  by  his  heritage  of  a  great  and 
growing  fund  of  knowledge.  The  great  minds 
may  lead,  but,  in  racial  movements,  only  when 
and  where  the  common  minds  have  wisdom  to 
give  the  commission  of  leadership.  The  march 
must  be  made  in  accordance  with  the  enlight- 
ened choice,  not  of  Platos  and  Bacons,  but  of 
the  masses — both  men  and  women.  Therefore, 
he  who  looks  for  a  solution  of  this  unguessed 
riddle,  should  expect  to  find  it,  not  in  the  in- 

432 


THE  SOCIAL  CRYSTAL 

tricacies  of  some  labyrinthine  and  factitious 
social  system,  but  in  the  relations  with  social 
organization  of  some  simple  and  obvious  truth, 
and  clothed  in  that  simplicity  which  all  may 
comprehend. 

Unless  it  comes  thus  it  can  never  come  at 
all;  for  no  collectivity  is  ever  wiser  than  the 
thoughts  and  instincts  average  of  its  members. 
Unless  it  comes  thus,  there  can  never  be  a 
reign  of  justice  and  of  brotherhood,  or  a  civil- 
ization not  foredoomed  to  failure. 

When  the  achievement  comes,  it  may  seem 
to  many  prosaic  and  even  trivial.  It  probably 
will  so  come.  Watching  the  movement  of  the 
kettle's  lid  is  a  prosaic  and  trivial  thing,  but 
when  a  Watt  did  it,  it  led  to  steam  and  elec- 
tricity and  transformed  the  habits  and  modes 
of  living  of  a  world.  It  was  a  thing  of  more 
real  sublimity  than  the  winning  of  Austerlitz 
or  the  losing  of  Waterloo.  To  some  it  may 
seem  an  anticlimax  when  it  is  said  that  this 
one  upward  step  necessary  to  the  complete  ul- 
timate triumph  of  justice,  and  the  entrance  of 
the  race  upon  the  long-sought  right  way  of 

433 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

collective  life,  will  have  been  taken  when  we 
shall  have  advanced  to  a  state  of  industrial 
liberty.  Yet  the  statement  is  only  another  way 
of  saying  that  the  body's  demands  are  impera- 
tive, while  the  soul's  can  wait;  or  that  before 
man  can  fix  his  eyes  upon  the  heavens  he  must 
be  freed  from  the  compulsion  which  rivets  his 
gaze  upon  the  muck-rake  of  unrequited  toil. 

No  one  who  has  thought  much  upon  the 
condition  of  the  people  of  the  world  here  or 
abroad  can  be  startled  by  the  implication  that 
industrial  liberty  is  still  unattained.  The 
crude  device  of  chattel  slavery  is  now  almost 
everywhere  abolished;  but  that  servitude 
much  more  universal  than  it  ever  was  has 
taken  its  place,  can  not  be  successfully  denied. 
Labor  is  enormously  increased  in  efficiency  as 
compared  with  the  past;  but  this  increase  re- 
sults mainly  io  augmented  power  and  wealth 
to  certain  privileged  classes,  mostly  non-pro- 
ductive, rather  than  in  better  conditions  among 
the  people  as  a  whole.  The  one  conspicuous 
shortcoming  in  our  progress  is  our  failure  to 
find  a  way  of  relieving  the  few  of  the  blight  of 

434 


THE  SOCIAL  CRYSTAL 

being  forced  by  social  maladjustments  to  rob 
the  many,  and  the  many  of  the  blight  of  being 
robbed. 

No  man  being  robbed  can  be  free;  and  no 
man  being  free  can  be  robbed.  Industrial  rob- 
bery must  cease  with  the  incoming  of  indus- 
trial liberty.  No  worker  can  be  industrially 
free  who  must  buy  access  to  the  earth's  surface 
of  some  other  man.  This  is  in  the  nature  of  the 
case  the  basis  of  servitude.  Some  change  in  in- 
stitutions must  be  effected  by  which  the  right 
of  every  person  to  the  use  of  the  earth  shall  be 
recognized  and  harmonized  with  that  assur- 
ance of  permanent  and  exclusive  private  pos- 
session of  lands  which  is  necessary  to  industry 
and  improvement.  When  man  once  sets  him- 
self to  the  accomplishment  of  this  change,  he 
will,  happily,  find  the  way  laid  out  in  every  de- 
tail by  the  pioneers  of  thought  There  is  no 
need  of  discovery  here,  nothing  but  the  accept- 
ance of  discovered  truth. 

This  upward  step  will  free  production  from 
the  fetters  of  landlordism — and  no  one  who 
has  studied  human  history  ought  to  be  igno- 

435 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

rant  of  the  fact  that  upon  landlordism  has  been 
based  every  aristocracy  in  history,  which  had 
enough  of  vitality  to  become  hereditary,  or  to 
plunder  the  masses  in  any  broad  and  effective 
way. 

As  production  is  in  large  part  made  up  of 
transportation,  the  reduction  of  the  great  high- 
ways of  the  present  and  future  to  the  posses- 
sion of  the  people,  and  the  recognition  of  the 
equal  right  of  every  man  to  their  use  for  travel 
and  shipment  of  goods,  are  surely  essential. 
There  seems  to  me  to  be  good  reason  to  believe 
that  when  we  shall  have  found  the  way  of  jus- 
tice in  dealing  with  land  and  highways,  we 
shall  have  solved  the  question  of  industrial 
liberty.  This  much,  at  least,  is  certain:  the  lib- 
erty of  the  social  unit,  which  is  essential  to  the 
formation  of  the  ideal  social  group,  can  not 
subsist  in  the  absence  of  justice  in  land  and 
transportation. 

With  the  striking  off  of  these  two  fetters, 
there  seems  to  be  every  reason  to  believe  that 
the  body  of  man  would  be  at  last  emancipated, 
and  that  industrial  slavery  would  pass  away; 

436 


THE  SOCIAL  CRYSTAL 

and  that  if  there  be  any  other  cords  binding  it, 
they  would  be  burst  asunder  inevitably  by  the 
impulse  to  get  rid  of  these  two.  No  one  can  be 
unaware  of  the  deep  import  of  this  statement, 
if  it  be  true.  It  means  that  we  are  actually  in 
sight  of  the  abolition  of  poverty — not  only  as 
a  possibility,  but  as  a  condition  which  practi- 
cal statesmen  may  hopefully  strive  to  attain  for 
this  generation,  by  practical  methods.  It 
means  that  society,  being  freed  from  the  fear 
of  want,  will  rapidly  lose  that  all-pervading 
greed  which  is  another  phase  of  that  fear;  for 
neither  men  nor  animals  ever  hoard  except 
under  the  compulsion  of  tendencies,  either  in- 
stinctive or  mental,  imparted  by  racial  or  in- 
dividual experience  of  deprivation  and  need. 
It  denies  the  often-repeated  assertion  of  the 
necessity  of  a  precedent  change  in  human  na- 
ture in  order  that  these  things  may  come 
about;  for  such  a  revolution  requires  changes 
in  institutions  only.  And,  unless  the  freedom 
and  prosperity  thus  attained  are  to  be  self- 
limited  by  their  own  consequences,  it  implies, 
that  with  the  advent  of  universal  plenty  will 

437 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

come  a  development  of  the  individual  and  a 
state  of  general  culture,  such  as  we  now  see  in 
the  affluent  and  intellectual  classes,  in  which 
that  equilibrium  of  births  and  deaths  will  be 
brought  about  which  Spencer  describes  as  the 
ultimate  result  of  race  development.  It  would 
seem  in  the  light  of  our  own  national  experi- 
ence in  the  formation,  in  the  course  of  two  or 
three  generations,  of  just  such  affluent  and  in- 
tellectual classes  from  a  poverty-stricken 
peasantry  under  the  influence  of  a  certain  de- 
gree of  industrial  freedom,  that,  in  the  long 
ages  which  must  elapse  before  over-popula- 
tion can  possibly  arise,  except,  perhaps,  in  the 
teeming  Orient,  we  may  confidently  expect 
that  the  state  of  individual  development  and 
general  culture  necessary  to  such  an  equilibri- 
um, will  inevitably  take  place.  It  is  the  nat- 
ural, the  inevitable  result  of  mental  develop- 
ment. It  is  the  manifestation  in  the  field  of 
humanity  and  intellect,  of  the  universal  bio- 
logical truth,  that  the  complete  and  unchecked 
development  of  the  individual  is  accompanied 
by  a  decrease  in  fecundity. 

438 


THE  SOCIAL  CRYSTAL 

Nothing,  therefore,  beyond  steps  the  neces- 
sity for  which  is  already  recognized  in  the 
racial  consciousness,  and  for  the  taking  of 
which  the  human  mind  has  already  made 
plans,  seems  essential,  in  order  that  the  social 
atom  may  be  set  free,  and  that  the  formation 
of  the  perfect  social  crystal  may  begin.  Does 
this  mean  that  we  are  on  the  verge  of  the  fa- 
bled millennium!  Not  unless  man's  conquest 
for  every  man  of  the  mere  brute  needs  of  food, 
shelter  and  clothing  constitutes  such  a  mil- 
lennium: and  in  the  light  of  the  progress 
toward  the  subjugation  of  nature  already 
made,  and  the  vast  and  accelerating  increase 
of  the  efficiency  of  labor  in  the  production  of 
wealth,  the  thought  that  there  is  anything  vi- 
sionary or  unattainable  in  this  conquest  seems 
absolutely  inadmissible.  But  if,  as  the  history 
of  civilization  proclaims  it,  the  satisfaction  of 
man's  bodily  wants  marks  only  a  point  of  de- 
parture for  real  progress  along  spiritual  and 
intellectual  lines,  then  the  solution  of  the  la- 
bor question,  the  abolition  of  poverty,  the  uni- 
versal attainment  to  a  "free  and  unfearing" 

439 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

life,  must  be  regarded  as  nothing  but  the  clear- 
ing of  the  ground  and  the  opening  of  the  way. 
We  shall  have  free  man,  but  man  with  all  the 
vices,  all  the  follies,  all  the  limitations  which 
have  ever  beset  him ;  but  he  will  be  upon  the 
high  road  leading  in  the  right  direction.  The 
way  will  open  freely  before  him,  a  magnificent 
and  enchanting  way,  the  way  which  seers  and 
prophets  and  poets  have  seen  and  trod  in  the 
spirit,  and  which,  at  last,  will  be  his  to  tread; 
but  it  will  be  a  long  way.  For  the  formation 
of  the  social  crystal  like  the  making  of  that 
in  the  inorganic  world,  the  element  of  time  is 
an  essential  factor. 

And  here  again  our  parallel  seems  in  large 
measure  to  hold  good.  Yet  one  need  not  look 
for  the  illustration  to  the  many-faceted  geode 
only,  with  its  eonian  age,  and  its  symmetrical 
jewels  formed  with  geologic  slowness  by 
molecule  upon  molecule  deposited  one  by  one 
as  the  centuries  rolled  by.  The  field  of  crys- 
tallization furnishes  more  optimistic  analo- 
gies. Sometimes  a  chemical  solution  will  stand 
in  its  containing  vessel  with  every  condition 

440 


THE  SOCIAL  CRYSTAL 

apparently  favorable  to  the  formation  of  the 
crystal,  which,  for  some  reason,  fails  to  take 
place.  But  drop  into  it  the  smallest  crystal  of 
the  same  substance,  and  the  good  example  is 
followed  almost  instantly  by  the  suspended 
molecules,  and  at  once  the  atomic  society  is 
reorganized.  Sometimes  a  similar  effect  may 
be  produced  by  a  sudden  jar  or  shock,  as  when 
the  spicules  of  ice  dart  across  a  tub  of  freezing 
water,  as  the  result  of  a  blow  upon  the  tub. 
Perhaps  the  visit  of  Perry  to  Japan  was  a  blow 
upon  the  tub,  in  a  way.  It  may  be  that  in  most 
civilized  nations  a  shock  of  some  sort  to  exist- 
ing institutions  may  be  required  to  set  the 
molecular  forces  in  motion.  But  one  is  led  to 
think  that  the  long-delayed  reorganization 
will  be  more  apt  to  evolve  by  the  benign  con- 
tagion of  some  successful  sociological  or  gov- 
ernmental experiment,  the  knowledge  of 
which  will  be  spread  abroad  by  the  press — the 
precipitating  crystal  dropped  into  the  satu- 
rated solution  of  society. 

To  the  question  which  asks  just  what  will 
take  place  when  such  a  social  evolution  results 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

in  social  revolution,  no  definite  answer  need 
be  attempted.  In  a  state  of  obedience  to  the 
law  of  equal  freedom,  that  which  maintains  it- 
self must  inevitably  be  in  harmony  with  uni- 
versal law,  and  therefore  just,  right  and  salu- 
tary; and  all  else  will  pass  away  of  its  own  im- 
perfection. The  diseases  of  the  body  politic, 
like  those  of  the  physical  body  may  most  hope- 
fully be  treated  by  supplying  the  conditions 
which  will  allow  nature  to  take  its  course.  We 
may  in  both  cases,  however,  anticipate  some  of 
the  directions  in  which  changes  will  take 
place. 

Inasmuch  as  the  most  obvious  maladjust- 
ments in  society  are  found  in  the  field  of  eco- 
nomics, it  is  here  that  we  may  expect  the  most 
marked  and  immediate  innovations  when  the 
truer  alinements  of  social  atoms  begin  to  mani- 
fest themselves.  Public  issues  leading  up  to 
them  will  be  joined  on  questions  of  the  proper 
functions  of  government — between  collectiv- 
ism and  individualism,  as  applied  to  specific 
matters.  Under  such  conditions,  the  present 
tendency  toward  militarism  and  the  building 

442 


THE  SOCIAL  CRYSTAL 

up  of  empires  must  surely  be  checked  and 
turned  back  by  the  fact  of  political  activities 
expending  themselves  upon  internal  affairs. 
Foreign  relations,  based  as  they  are  upon  in- 
ternational hostilities  and  jealousies,  must  be 
transformed,  if  not  greatly  reduced  in  impor- 
tance, by  the  growth  of  political  parties  of  in- 
ternational scope,  some  of  which  are  already 
in  existence.  Wars  will  be  impossible  between 
democracies  in  which  economic  issues  of  the 
basic  sort  are  being  fought  out — as  witness  the 
attitude  of  the  socialists  in  Japan  and  Russia 
toward  each  other  while  their  nations  were  at 
war,  and  the  anti-war  demonstrations  in  the 
present  Balkan  crisis.  The  equalization  of 
rights  to  the  land  can  be  accomplished  in  but 
one  of  two  ways :  land  nationalization  with  a 
universal  leasehold  tenure,  or  the  reduction  of 
all  ground  rents  to  public  ownership  through 
an  annual  tax  on  the  value  of  all  valuable 
lands,  equal  to  the  annual  rental  value  of  the 
land,  exclusive  of  improvements. 

Under  either  mode,  the  revenues  of  the  gov- 
ernment being  derived  from  ground  rents,  all 

443 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

reason  for  tariffs  (even  tariffs  for  revenue), 
for  internal  revenue  imposts,  for  octroi  duties, 
poll  taxes,  for  licenses,  and  for  personal  prop- 
erty taxes  and  taxes  on  improvements  would 
disappear,  and  with  them,  the  taxes  them- 
selves, and  all  the  complicated  governmental 
machinery  for  collecting  them  and  for  pun- 
ishing violators  of  revenue  laws.  In  these 
ways,  governments,  local,  state  and  national, 
would  in  certain  respects  be  enormously  sim- 
plified. On  the  other  hand  the  business  of 
the  government  along  the  lines  of  transporta- 
tion and  the  transmission  of  intelligence  would 
be  greatly  extended.  Government  would  be 
closely  confined  to  the  administration  of  the 
collective  property — to  the  handling  of  those 
things  which  the  law  of  equal  freedom  will 
not  leave  in  the  hands  of  private  individuals. 

Transportation  would,  no  doubt,  proceed 
along  present  lines,  but  with  an  emphasis  on 
waterways  at  least  equal  to  that  on  railways, 
through  an  era  of  great  development.  But 
with  a  realization  of  the  fact  that  wise  road- 
building  would,  by  adding  to  land  values,  pay 

444 


THE  SOCIAL  CRYSTAL 

for  itself  in  an  immediate  influx  of  revenues, 
the  anticipation  of  a  great  demand  for  paved 
and  macadamized  roads  would  result  in  the 
increased  use  of  motor-cars  for  both  freight 
and  passenger  carriage,  and,  thus,  perhaps,  an 
eventual  tendency  of  transportation  back  into 
private  hands,  and  the  use  of  railways  and 
waterways  for  the  heavy  and  through  business 
only.  Under  such  conditions,  cities  would 
spread  over  greater  and  greater  areas,  the 
slum  would  cease  with  the  poverty  and  the 
pressure  of  rents  which  cause  it,  the  flat  and 
apartment-house  would  become  a  historic  puz- 
zle, every  person  desiring  them  would  have  his 
field  and  garden,  and  the  country  road  would 
again  become  a  great  artery  of  traffic. 

The  restoration  of  the  land  to  the  people  by 
institutions  rendering  it  unprofitable  for  any 
person  to  hold  a  site  except  for  the  purpose  of 
putting  it  to  its  highest  use,  would  make  it  pos- 
sible for  people  to  try  many  experiments 
which  they  can  not  now  attempt  on  account  of 
the  price  of  sites.  Cooperative  housekeeping, 
that  greatest  need  of  so  many  women,  is  one 

445 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

of  the  most  obvious  of  these.  The  industrial 
crystal,  its  formation  rendered  possible  by  free 
land  for  factory  sites  and  homes,  would  take 
the  form  of  cooperative  factories,  probably 
incorporated,  in  which  the  shareholders  would 
be  the  workmen.  It  seems  probable  that  the 
corporation,  now  the  oppressor  of  the  com- 
mon man,  will  become  the  favorite  form  of  co- 
operative organization,  permitting  as  it  does, 
the  easy  transfer  of  memberships  from  hand  to 
hand,  and  the  additional  advantage  of  well- 
understood  duties  and  liabilities. 

In  no  field,  perhaps,  would  more  radical 
changes  take  place  than  in  agriculture.  Ten- 
ant farming  would  cease  absolutely.  The 
tendency  would  no  doubt  be  to  production 
upon  a  large  scale  by  voluntarily  formed  co- 
operative groups,  the  members  living  in  vil- 
lages and  thus  enjoying  the  intellectual  life  of 
jthe  city.  It  is  coming  to  be  known  that  farm- 
ing is  a  business  founded  upon  one  of  the  most 
abstruse  of  sciences — a  whole  system  of  sci- 
ences, in  fact.  The  cooperative  farming  com- 
munity would  have  its  work  divided  into 

446 


THE  SOCIAL  CRYSTAL 

departments  under  skilled  specialists  in  agron- 
omy, animal  husbandry  and  horticulture.  One 
can  get  a  glimpse  of  this  sort  of  life  at  any  of 
our  great  agricultural  colleges.  Under  it  pro- 
duction would  be  enormously  increased,  and 
the  cooperative  farm  would  vie  with  the  co- 
operative factory  in  ushering  in  an  era  of 
plenty. 

These  suggestions  are  based  upon  the  fact 
that  man  is  a  gregarious  animal,  and  that  the 
solitary  life  and  the  solitary  mode  of  produc- 
tion is  unnatural  and  forced,  as  well  as  upon 
the  consideration  that  it  is  only  by  combina- 
tion of  laborers  and  division  of  labor  that  hu- 
man effort  is  most  productive.  That  things  will 
turn  out  in  large  measure  as  sketched  above 
can  not,  it  seems  to  me,  be  doubted.  But  how- 
ever that  may  be,  under  freedom  attained  as  it 
must  be  by  the  exercise  of  the  intellect,  instinc- 
tive tendencies,  intuitions  resting  upon  bases 
deeper  than  reason  can  comprehend,  must 
bring  man  at  last  to  the  status  which  is  best  for 
him,  to  the  natural  status  of  the  cooperative 
animal,  the  right  way  of  collective  life.  Jus- 

447 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

tice  in  the  last'  analysis  harms  no  one,  and  can 
be  opposed  to  the  true  interests  of  no  one. 
Even  selfishness,  enlightened  selfishness, 
should  impel  every  one  to  strive  for  universal 
justice,  which  is  truth  applied  to  human  re- 
lations. 

We  need  not  discuss,  therefore,  or  much 
care,  whether  institutions  like  the  public  bath, 
the  government  store,  or  the  government  fac- 
tory or  free  transportation  for  persons  and 
commodities  will  continue  or  come  into  be- 
ing, in  the  better  days  to  come.  If  democ- 
racy be  a  necessary  part  of  the  cosmic  plan, 
then  every  man  must  become  his  own  king; 
but  we  need  not  discuss  the  question  as  to 
whether  this  implies  his  becoming  his  own 
priest  also.  That  liberty  of  every  man  which 
leaves  every  other  man  equally  free,  that  free- 
dom which  Jesus  says  comes  from  knowing  the 
truth,  may  be  trusted  as  implicitly  as  we  trust 
the  truth  of  nature  which  appears  in  the  in- 
stinct of  the  cooperating  animals,  in  the 
wheeling  into  orderly  ranks  of  the  atoms 
which  make  the  flaming  jewel,  in  the  harmony 

448 


THE  SOCIAL  CRYSTAL 

of  the  spinning  spheres  which  encircle  the  sun, 
in  the  immeasurable  sublimities  of  the  revolv- 
ing world  of  the  stellar  universe.  All  filth  is 
but  matter  out  of  place.  All  evil  is  but  per- 
verted good.  There  is  no  vice  which  is  not 
virtue  turned  awry.  Once  set  free  the  units 
which  make  up  this  muddy  world  of  ours,  and 
when  they  have  floated  from  their  wallow  of 
want  and  greed  and  mutual  murder,  all  things 
must  tend  more  and  more  to  "move  to  the 
spheral  rhythm  of  love." 

If  mankind  could  be  made  to  believe  these 
things,  the  very  fact  of  such  belief  would  make 
their  attainment  possible.  Never  before  did 
the  world  face  such  perils  as  now,  since  Rome 
went  staggering  back  from  civilization  into 
barbarism.  The  history  of  man  shows  him 
ever  rising  to  surmount  the  obstacles  of  his 
own  ignorance  of  collective  life,  and  ever  fall- 
ing short  in  the  attempt.  He  now  stands  be- 
fore the  old  barrier,  with  the  discouragements 
of  many  defeats  weighing  him  down.  He 
finds  it  hard  to  believe  in  his  own  destiny  as 
containing  aught  of  promise.  The  wise  men 

449 


ON  BOARD  THE  GOOD  SHIP  EARTH 

have  told  him  that  vice,  crime,  war,  pesti- 
lence, poverty  and  famine  exist  in  the  nature 
of  things,  that  they  are  but  human  manifesta- 
tions of  the  struggle  for  existence;  and  have 
found  buttresses  for  this  gospel  of  gloom  in 
wage-fund  theories,  Malthusian  theories,  laws 
of  diminishing  returns  and  false  readings  of 
gospels.  The  dry  exhorters  of  pseudo-religion 
have  listened  for  the  golden  clink  of  coin  fall- 
ing into  sacerdotal  coffers  from  the  mints 
wherein  men's  souls  and  women's  souls  and 
bodies  are  crushed  into  profits,  and  have  si- 
lenced the  questionings  of  their  flocks  and 
their  own  consciences  by  the  blasphemous  rep- 
etition of  the  text,  "The  poor  ye  have  always 
with  you,"  falling  as  it  did  from  the  lips  of 
Him  whose  gospel  was  glad  tidings,  not  to  the 
rich,  but  the  poor. 

But  now  there  seems  to  be  a  growing  change 
in  man's  attitude.  He  comes  to  the  old  prob- 
lem with  new  knowledge.  To  those  who  ask 
him  to  bear  all  burdens  here  that  he  may  be 
blest  in  the  next  world,  he  answers,  "One 
world  at  a  time!  I  live  in  this  world."  To  him 

450 


THE  SOCIAL  CRYSTAL 

who  says  that  poverty  comes  from  God's  laws 
he  answers  that  a  demon  might  have  created  a 
world  without  provisions  for  its  inhabitants, 
but  a  just  God,  never.  To  every  argument  ad- 
duced from  nineteenth  century  science  to 
prove  the  inevitableness  of  these  injustices,  he 
brings  arguments  more  scientific  for  universal 
peace  and  plenty.  And  back  of  all  glimpse  the 
fair  vistas  of  a  society  which  has  passed  all  its 
dangers  by,,  in  which,  man's  struggles  with 
man  being  over,  he  addresses  all  his  efforts  to 
the  struggle  with  nature,  an  ennobling  contest 
in  which  all  things,  the  attractions  and  repul- 
sions of  atoms,  the  turning  of  the  sphere,  the 
stars  in  their  courses,  shall  be  in  harmony  with 
him  and  he  with  them. 


THE  END 


14  DAY  USE 

RETURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROWED 

LOAN  DEPT. 

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